Once you have mixed your hCG and it’s now a liquid, it’s important to keep it both refrigerated and away from the light. You can do this by wrapping your vial of hCG with foil. Take it out only to take your daily dose of hCG, then put it right back in the fridge.

Once your bacteriostatic water has been opened and used to mix your hCG, the bottle of bac water that is left should be kept in the fridge. If you are doing a long round of 6 weeks (43 days or so), you will be using that same bottle of bac water again to remix your 2nd batch of hCG.

Usually the potency of hCG will last between 3-4 weeks. You would notice if the potency had dropped too far to do what it should as your hunger levels would increase.

Since the original protocol had patients doing the hCG Diet in either 3 or 6 week rounds, it seems to work well to use one vial for 3-ish weeks, or remix a 2nd vial of hCG for the following 3 weeks to finish out a longer 6 week round.

Making Changes to the Original Hcg Diet (3)

Some of you may have wondering, like myself, why the miracle noodles aka shirataki noodles that we sometimes use on the hCG diet have that fishy odor that requires you to rinse them well to make them edible? Apparently, according to this source, the raw Konjac flour that the noodles are made from have a fishy odor. Go figure? A root that stinks like fish!

This is actually easily done by just removing the grissini/melba in the diet.

As a matter of fact, very few hCGers eat this on the diet anyway. I never have. Not one single melba (sorry m!) Very few I know of do.

It won’t harm you on the diet in any way to leave out the grain product and the majority of those who had it and then removed it felt better- they report their cravings are much less when they do not eat the grissini.

In fact, the start of the hCG diet for me was how I originally became gluten free myself- it’s been over 2 years now and I’m gluten free for life.

Dictionary for the Hcg Diet (1)

Hcg:Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (full name of the hormone)VLCD: Very Low Calorie Day or Very Low Calorie Diet (depends on who you ask).P2: portion of the diet when you are on the very low calorie “diet” part.P3: portion of the protocol following P2 (the low calorie part) where you increase your calories to what’s considered “normal” while avoiding all starches and sugars to stabilize your new weight. This period usually last for 3 weeks.P4: portion of the protocol following P3 where you can begin adding back in some starches and sugars in moderation and see how they affect your weight.LDW: Last Day Weight- the weight you are the morning after your last day taking Hcg- be it sublingual or homeopathic method. This is the weight you will be trying to stay within 2 lbs of while in P3.LIW: Last Injection Weight- the weight you are the morning after your last injection. This is the weight you will be trying to stay within 2 lbs of while in p3.POP: Perfect on Protocol- used to tell people whether or not they are following the protocol “perfectly” as Dr. Simeon’s wrote it.MOP: My Own Protocol- used to tell people their version of the Hcg diet they are following, which will be different from the original diet protocol.Steak Day:Usually this refers to what is done if, during P3 (the stabilization phase w/no starches and sugars) a person finds themselves above the 2lb limit from their LDW. They would then on that day eat nothing all day and eat for dinner a good sized steak with either an apple or tomato. This usually causes a person to drop by down to within their 2 lb limit the following day. Technically every time you have to do a steak day, you are supposed to start the 3 week “P3” time period over.Apple Day: This is done occasionally on P2 (the low calorie part). If a person hasn’t lost any scale weight in a few days and is feeling overly frustrated, Dr. Simeons put into his original protocol that a patient could take one day to eat only apples all day, up to 6. This is designed purely to shed any excess water retention. It is not advisable to do this often or for fun, since there is no protein included on an apple day.TOM: Time of Month. Aka your period.Miracle Noodles: Noodles that are made of the Japanese Konjac root- they are almost zero calories, zero carbs, and zero everything- it’s just soluble fiber. I have used these freely on many of my rounds with no fat loss problems.Shirataki Noodles: Same thing as the miracle noodles. However, check the labels of these because there are 2 types of shirataki noodles. Some are made with tofu, and these you do NOT want to purchase. The package should say something like “yam flour” as the main ingredient- do not fear, this is not American yam- this the Konjac yam (root) that contains no calories or carbs- it is just soluble fiber. These can be found at many local Asian and Ethnic food markets for a much cheaper price than the Miracle Noodles online. They are always kept in the refrigerated section. Here is what they look like:Chocolate DelightChoco DChocolate Crack: These names all refer to a mixture of coconut oil, cocoa powder and some form of sweetener in varying ratios, melted together then frozen or refrigerated and eaten often by many during P2- please seen my Common Concerns on the HCG Diet section before you decide to eat this on P2. I am concerned that it could cause muscle loss on Hcg, so please proceed with caution. As a P3 food this would definitely be a great alternative to “regular” desserts.Mug Cake: A P3 friendly dessert. So named because it’s made in a mug (the kind you drink out of?). Aha, the lightbulb goes off. Took me that long anyway when I first heard of it. Check out this awesome video tutorial with a recipe by MsHcgGirl on Youtube. I found a blogger who appears to have discovered a P2 friendly version of this dish here.Mac Nut Day: A modification to the original protocol on P2 where a person eats a certain number of Macadamia Nuts and nothing else the entire day. In general, I wouldn’t recommend this- please see the Common Concerns about the HCG Diet section.

Dosing / Dosage for hCG (3)

Most people find that a dose between 125iu-175iu to be the right dose for them. My suggestion would be start with 125iu and to increase the dose if you find yourself unreasonably hungry after the first few days. You can see a more in depth video discussing how you know if you are on the right dose of hCG here.

The dose of hCG will be right for you when you experience the least hunger. In real terms what this means is that for the most part, the only time you should experience hunger is at meal times, and once you have your small meal of 250 calories or so, you should no longer be hungry for several hours afterwards. Some find they do need to eat a little something in the mornings and this is fine, but for most of the day you shouldn’t have a feeling of hunger (although you may have an “empty” feeling since your stomach will never really be “full”) except briefly at mealtimes.

Can you take a look at the ingredients on your bottle of hCG drops? There are basically three types of “hCG” out there now.

1. Prescription hCG – the real hormone
2. Homeopathic hCG – if it’s true homeopathic hCG it will contain something like “hCG – 10x, 30x, 60x, etc type numbers)
3. hCG Activator products – these do not contain any hCG at all, but contain amino acids. It’s claimed these these amino acids cause your body to make hCG. I do not know if I believe this at this point you guys. I like to keep an open mind.

When it comes down to it, my personal choice is that I really only feel comfortable using prescription hCG, the real hormone. One example given to me was the question, “would you feel comfortable taking homeopathic birth control?” Hmmm. Hormones are powerful! I do not think the hCG hormone is a placebo so, so the muscle sparing effects that hCG seems to create in the presence of such a low calorie diet is very important to me. However, I have to admit that I have seen some great results with homeopathic hCG as well, so I can’t knock it completely, and some choose to go this route and feel completely comfortable with it. I have not seen enough feedback from these hCG activator products (that don’t contain hCG) to feel comfortable recommending them at this time. The truth is, anyone will lose weight on a 500 calorie, regardless of taking any supplement or hormone.

The questions are:
1. how much of that weight loss is fat vs. muscle,
2. how is your hunger while ON the diet itself, and
3. how will the diet effect your metabolism during and after the diet (and thus ability to maintain)?

To me the hCG hormone is what kind of guarantees a positive answer to these questions, whereas I do not have proof of such with the other hCG type products at this time. The others MAY work, I just can’t be sure, and I feel best sticking with what I know can be relied on since I only have one body and no time for do-overs.

The current sources for real prescription hCG that I feel comfortable recommending, if you end up choosing to go that route, can be found here: http://hcgchica.com/buy-hcg-injections-worldwide/
And all my tutorials for injections are here to help you with mixing and injecting!: http://hcgchica.com/hcg-injections-tutorials/

Great question! This is a commonly misunderstood thing and I can totally understand why, because usually we’re all like, if a little of something is effective, MORE of it is more effective right?? Actually, in the case of hCG, that’s not true. What I have found is that you usually have the best amount of weight loss, and the best TYPE of weight loss (fat, not muscle) when you take the dose that puts you in the most non-hunger state. I could be wrong about this, but being extremely hungry on hCG (which is often how women feel on the higher dosages of hCG 200 iu and up) makes me feel like something is wrong and that the body will not be behaving in the same way as when it doesn’t feel hungry- I guess what I’m saying is that I worry that more muscle loss might be going on if a person was feeling constantly ravenous on a too high dose of hCG. I don’t know this for sure, it’s just my concern, and from what I’ve seen, the lower doses that work best for most in the 125-150iu neighborhood have yielded great body fat testing results as far as ratio of fat loss goes.

Where to Find Support and Help on the Hcg Diet (4)

1. One way to find others who are currently on the Hcg diet is to do a search on youtube for “Hcg P2 October 2012” or “Hcg vlcd october 2012” (obviously put in the current month and year). Several different people who are currently vlogging their weightloss journey should come up. Subscribe to them and you will start getting their videos in your “subscriptions” folder in the drop down menu under your profile name on the top RH side of the youtube page.
2. After subscribing to them, take at look at the names of those commenting on their videos- they are most likely either on an Hcg round as well or actively supporting the Hcg youtube community at the time you are looking. You can click on these other Hcg youtube names and subscribe to them too.
3. If you find an Hcg youtuber who has a lot of subscribers, you can check out their subscriber list and subscribe to some of the people on their list. As an example, if you go to my channel page on youtube, if you look towards the upper RH side you’ll see a number with “subscribers” in tiny letters below it. You can click on that and it will take you to a list of my subscribers, that you can then subscribe to yourself. Keep in mind that this list doesn’t appear (to me at least) to be in any order according to date or activity level, so some of the subscribers you see first may or may not be currently vlogging or watching Hcg videos. However, many of them will have videos of their Hcg journey, whenever it took place, that you can watch and gain information from.

If would like to vlog your Hcg journey on youtube, or have started doing so, and would like to get fellow Hcger’s to watch you and support you with comments, do the following:

After subscribing to Hcger’s that you found, start viewing and commenting on their videos. Oftentimes, they will see your name on there and not only reply to your comment, but sub you back. Don’t count on it every time, but make it a practice to comment on all the vlogs you see and you will start to make yourself a part of the Hcg youtube community, and you will find that more people will start subscribing to you in return and commenting on your videos.

Once you start having fellow Hcger’s comment on your personal vlogs, you will encourage them to continue taking the time to watch your vlogs and comment by replying to their comments. This will show them that you appreciate their effort.

This one is a little trickier. The only way I know of to connect with people on myfitnesspal who are doing the Hcg diet is if you hear them talking about myfitnesspal on their youtube vlog. If they tell you their name on myfitnesspal, you can send them a friend invite- to do this you would go to the Community tab, then under “Member Search”, towards the far RH side you’ll see a box for “username or email”. You just type in their username (for instance, mine is Hcgchica) and hit “search.” When their profile comes up, you click “send invite.” Then wait to hear back. Most people are a little more private with who they friend on myfitnesspal because they are using this as their private food journal/diary and don’t want just everyone and anyone seeing what they are eating on a daily basis. There is a place for running comments on myfitnesspal, kind of like on Facebook but just on a much smaller scale, with those who are on your friends list.

Oftentimes it may be that an Hcger’s youtue name is the same as their myfitnesspal name (as mine is), so if there is particular Hcg vlogger on youtube you like, you can always do a search on myfitnesspal to see if they come up with you type in their youtube name and send them a friend invite. If they don’t know who you are, you might send them a message first letting them know your intentions or why you want to friend them. You can send a message after you do your member search- when their profile comes up the left hand button says “send message.”

To start finding others who are doing the Hcg diet, you can simply search “hcg” in the Facebook search box at the top of the page. Names of individuals with Hcg in it should come up. Most people on the Hcg diet make a separate facebook profile just for Hcg as they like to keep it separate from their personal life, so that’s why you’ll often find a personal name and the word Hcg attached to it somehow. For instance my facebook name is Rayzel Hcgchica. Once you see some names on the list you can send friend invitations.

Be careful with this though. When I first joined Facebook, maybe a year ago, I started trying to friend everyone and their mother that had Hcg in their name, and I was getting warnings from Facebook to stop that or they would freeze my account or something like that. I think they blocked me from sending friend requests for 7 days or something silly like that. Some people don’t like when someone tries to friend them that they don’t know, but that’s the thing about Hcg and Facebook- there’s no way we’re going to know the other people who are on Hcg on facebook unless we know them from youtube or something, so I just wait and then start friending again. Now I have a lot so I don’t bother doing that anymore. But that’s a way to get in the loop and start seeing what’s happening. I will be very upfront with you though and say that much of the News Feed on Hcg Facebook community is not Hcg related. Some of it is, but people post a lot of other stuff too- you know, cute little kittens saying something sarcastic, stuff like that- so if that’s your cup of tea great! If you only want to read about Hcg stuff, youtube is a better bet.

Lastly, if you go to the profile page of a fellow Hcger you have friended on Facebook, you can go look at their batch of “friends” and send them friend invites too.

If you are using the double 28 day kit and plan on doing a round of hCG for 6 weeks, which for the most part is the longest recommended time you stay on hCG before taking a break, I would suggest you remix your fresh batch of hCG after 3 weeks, that way you are getting the freshest hCG for each 3 weeks you are on the diet (you will simply toss the rest).

Note: Right now, this company is sending Bac water in glass vials- I found when my I mixed my hCG from this kit that I had to pull the bacteriostatic water out of the glass vial in two batches-ie, pull up 2ml’s of bac water, add to the vial with hCG, pull up another 3ml’s of bac water, add to the vial of hCG. This is because the glass vial of bacteriostatic water can’t contract at all and is full to the top, so the vacuum inside is so strong, it’s very difficult to pull the whole 5ml’s of bac water out all at once. Just a word to the wise on that one! You want to go slow and make sure you get the accurate amount of 5ml’s into your mixture so you can dose your hCG properly.

While on the hCG Diet, you will take your hCG injections daily, once per day, usually in the morning. You will take the injections both while loading for 2 days and then daily while on the very low calorie portion of the diet.

Yes, you can, but please read my thoughts on why you may not want to do this.

Why it may be a good idea NOT to pre-load needles with hCG:

Keeping your hCG in the vial until you need it each day allows you to change your dose as hCG when needed.

The main reason it may be a good idea to keep your hCG mixture in the vial and take out your hCG on a daily basis from it is in case you need to change your dose mid-round. This happens all the time- in fact, if you are a person who happens to start miraculously on the exact perfect dose of hCG for you, and not need to change the dosage at some point during the round, well you are rare my friend.

By dosing your hCG daily as needed instead of pre-loading your needles, you will be able to adjust your dose as necessary. At the start of each hCG round, sometimes there is a dosage change that needs to be made almost right away as you may find the dose you’re on to be too high or too low to create that non-hunger state that is very important. Additionally, once you find a dose that feels really good and makes you not hungry, you may still find a few weeks in to the diet as you’ve lost weight that you need to reduce or adjust your dose once again- many as they get smaller have found that they’ve needed to gradually reduce their dose of hCG to get the same no-hunger feeling.

If you pre-load your needles, you will not be able to change your dose unless you put your injection needle back into the hCG vial and this will dull the needle further making your injection painful. Also it’s just a lot of trouble to do this.

If you do decide you want to pre-load your needles anyway, this is how you can do it:

– Draw up enough hCG for the given dose into each injection syringe, being careful to make sure that the entire chosen area of the syringe is full of the hCG liquid and there are no gaping holes or pockets of air. Do no let the needles touch anything else except where you stick it into the hCG vial and immediately…

– Put the injection caps back on each needle.

– Store the needles in a paper bag or something else that will prevent light from reaching them.

Usually the potency of hCG will last between 3-4 weeks. You would notice if the potency had dropped too far to do what it should as your hunger levels would increase.

Since the original protocol had patients doing the hCG Diet in either 3 or 6 week rounds, it seems to work well to use one vial for 3-ish weeks, or remix a 2nd vial of hCG for the following 3 weeks to finish out a longer 6 week round.

I am not a nurse or medical professional, but from what I’ve read, it is only safe to use either Bacteriostatic Water or Bacteriostatic Sodium Chloride to mix your hCG Injections. Better safe than sorry.

I am not a nurse or medical professional, but from what I’ve read, it is only safe to use either Bacteriostatic Water or Bacteriostatic Sodium Chloride to mix your hCG Injections. Better safe than sorry.

“I followed your mixing instructions…. 5 ml water for my 5000 iu HCG. But the math doesn’t work. If I were to the now 5 ml water in my (mixed whith my HCG) Devide it by 175 it gives me 28 1/2 days…. I thought protocol was 23 days. I have done HCG in the past but got it already in those little “insulin” syringes. HELP”

Okay so I can see where the confusion is happening. Basically, you don’t mix your hCG according to what dose you’ll take or how many days you want it to last, and I’ll explain why.

By mixing 5000iu to 5mls of mixing liquid, it means where you draw up on the syringe will equal these different doses:

So you don’t want to actually mix the hCG in a way so as to make it last a certain length of time, or to get a certain dose. You want the dose that provides the least hunger.

What this means is I would actually always have hCG that I ended up throwing away at the end of a round because there was some left over and the potency is really only best up to about 3-4 weeks. The dose you’ll take on hCG will definitely allow for you to use the hCG this long and most likely you’ll have some left at the end to toss. Too high a dose (which actually most people find 175ius to be too high a dose for them) will cause bad hunger. So that’s why you want to base it not on making the hCG last a certain number of days only etc.

I hope that makes a little more sense. Mixing this way allows you to easily change your dose of hCG mid-round which is often necessary as a person loses weight.

You will always mix your hCG in a 1:1 ratio if you are doing hcg injections.
For a 5000iu vial of hCG this means you will mix 5ml’s of bacteriostatic water with 5000iu of hCG.

Mix this way if you have purchased your hCG and kit from escrowrefills:
-Take 2ml’s of bacteriostatic water with your large mixing syringe and inject it into your vial containing the powdered hCG. Swirl it gently to dissolve the hCG.
-Redraw the 2ml’s of bac water that also now contains hCG from that vial and put it into your 10ml sized sterile empty vial.
-Add an additional 3ml’s of bacteriostatic water to the 2mls already in the vial and you will now have 5mls of bac water and 5000iu of hCG in the vial you’ll be using to dose your hCG each day.

When you mix your hCG this way the following dose of hCG will line up with the marks on the injection syringes this way:
12.5 units= 125iu of hCG
15 units= 150iu of hCG
17.5 units= 175iu of hCG

This makes changing your dose of hCG should you need to during your round very easy.

You will always mix hCG for injections in a 1:1 ratio.
This means for a 2000iu vial of hCG you will simple mix 2ml’s of hCG with 2000iu of hCG.

Mix this way if you have purchased your hCG and kit from escrowrefills:
– Take 1ml of bacteriostatic water with our mixing syringe and inject it into the small bottle of powdered hCG. Swirl gently to dissolve the hCG.
– Redraw up at that same 1ml of bac water that now contains hCG as well and put into the sterile empty vial that your kit will come with.
-Add an additional 1ml of bacteriostatic water to the vial that now contains your hCG. Done!

When you mix your hCG this way the following dose of hCG will line up with the marks on the injection syringes this way:
12.5 units= 125iu of hCG
15 units= 150iu of hCG
17.5 units= 175iu of hCG

This makes changing your dose of hCG should you need to during your round very easy.

The final mixing ratio you want to have is 1:1, or in this case, 5ml’s of bacteriostatic water in 5000iu of hCG.Your supplies:
-small vial that contains your powdered hCG.
-empty, 10ml sized sterile vial
-Bacteriostatic water
-Mixing syringe/needle

Your entire mixture is going to end up in the empty sterile vial- that is the vial that you will be drawing up your hCG from every day and that you will keep in the fridge.
To do this, you need to dilute the powdered hCG to make it a liquid that you can then draw up and put into the sterile vial. So take 2ml’s of Bacteriostatic water with your mixing syringe/needle, and put that in the little vial containing your hCG. Gently swirl the bottle to dissolve all the hCG powder (do not shake). Using your mixing needle again, draw that entire 2ml’s of liquid back up (that now contains the hCG as well) and inject that liquid into the sterile empty vial. Draw up 3ml’s more of the Bacteriostatic water, and inject that into the sterile empty vial (that’s no longer empty of course but that contains the hCG liquid) as well. Now you should have 1 vial containing 5ml’s of bac water and 5000iu of hCG.

Your final ratio will be 1:1 for this mixture. The 28 day hCG kit comes with a 5000iu vial of hCG.You will have the following supplies:
-1 10ml vial containing the powdered hCG
-1 bottle of Bacteriostatic water
-1 mixing syringe/needle

Draw up 5ml’s of bacteriostatic water with the mixing syringe/needle, and inject into the vial containing your hCG. Done!Note: Right now, this company is sending Bac water in glass vials- I found when my I mixed my hCG from this kit that I had to pull the bacteriostatic water out of the glass vial in two batches-ie, pull up 2ml’s of bac water, add to the vial with hCG, pull up another 3ml’s of bac water, add to the vial of hCG. This is because the glass vial of bacteriostatic water can’t contract at all and is full to the top, so the vacuum inside is so strong, it’s very difficult to pull the whole 5ml’s of bac water out all at once. Just a word to the wise on that one! You want to go slow and make sure you get the accurate amount of 5ml’s into your mixture so you can dose your hCG properly.

Fats and Oils on the Hcg Diet (3)

Essentially what I get out of it, and I do believe, is that the hCG hormone makes your body a lot more sensitive to fat – both getting out of your body and going in – so you lose fat more readily/faster on hCG than if you weren’t taking the hormone, but you also gain fat more readily/faster on the hormone.

The skin is actually the body’s largest organ and we can indeed absorb stuff into our system through our skin, so hCG seems to make it so you can actually absorb oils that can be stored as fat in your body. Basically I just mostly made sure my foundation/powder etc. was oil free. I didn’t sweat my mascara etc because there’s really hardly any contact there with the skin. I hope that helps!

Since I’m not a doctor, I can’t really give advice on what types of medications to continue or stop. If someone is on a prescription medication for something, most continue to take whatever it is without issue. Things like thyroid meds, etc, I myself continued while on the diet, as do others. Also, it’s not safe to stop most medications suddenly without weaning off anyway.

High dose steroids I see as being a definite problem as far interference with weight loss, so it would be best to wait till something like that was over and done with before embarking on hCG.

That said, when it comes to certain things like hormone replacement therapy or taking any type of cream that is in oil base (although mineral oil is ok, just not other oils), this can interfere with weight loss on hCG- just something to be aware of or to speak with your doc about.

The other thing I should mention is that when a person who is on insulin or diabetes meds for diabetes does this diet, they often find their medication levels need to be adjusted so if a person has Diabetes, this is one particular case where it’s really advised to do this protocol under the more direct care of your physician who can help monitor this and adjust accordingly to avoid problems with blood sugar and such.

As far as any other regularvitaminsand supplements go, the only ones you need to be sure to avoid are oil basedvitaminslikevitaminE caps or fish oil caps, omega 3 and 6, orvitaminD. Most others, like bvitamins, or general health supplements are going to be fine- sometimes the ingredient label may say it contains starch and some feel this is a problem, but if the amount is very minute, I don’t see it as being an issue because the diet itself DOES contain a small amount of carbs in the melba/fruit and veggies, so it seems like it should be fine.

I’ve been getting this question a little more frequently so I figured I better get my bottom in gear and research your options a little better. Forgive me if I am clueless, as I do not have African American hair! 😉

The concern:
Any absorption of MOST oils through the skin on hCG can cause problems with stalls. So most oils, even ones like castor oil, jojoba oil, etc. are something to steer clear of.

What Oil Based Products ARE okay:
Mineral oil based products.

Examples:

Mineral oil

Baby oil

Petroleum based Vaseline

Other possibilities:

This woman (unrelated to hCG) is finding that moisturizers that don’t contain oil are actually making her hair look better than the regular oil based products. She suggests aloe vera based products.

A possible in-between solution:

The real problem is with the oils getting on the scalp. So another possibility is to (wearing gloves of course!) use your regular hair product on the middle-ends of your hair, making sure it’s far enough away from your scalp that it won’t soak into it, and then use an oil free product or the mineral oil based product on your scalp area only. I know it’s probably not ideal, but at least it might suffice and look better than some of the other alternatives like no product whatsoever or something.

Lastly, some women that I read only reported that they didn’t experience any difference in weight loss when it came to using their usual products containing some oil vs. not doing so. So, in the end, it’s up to you if you want to be extra cautious, or if you feel like experimenting a little to see if it’s a problem for you or not.

Deciding Where to Purchase Hcg (4)

2 of the companies I used when I was on my own hCG journey- Escrow Refills and US hCG Shots, and the other 2, Nu Image Medical and Advance hCG are also U.S. based companies that I have communicated with at length, so I know that the hCG they send is both real, and their staff has been very easy to work with.

Escrow refills is an overseas company, meaning their hCG is produced and sent from overseas. The other 3 sources on my blog are U.S. made. The main difference between U.S. made hCG and overseas made hCG is that the FDA regulates the hCG made here in the states. There are no such regulations for overseas.

At the time of my own weight loss journey, U.S. made hCG really wasn’t available to buy online, so I made due with what was around, and since I lost the majority of my weight with Escrow Refills and everything seemed to be fine, that is why I continue to have them on my blog as a source- it’s certainly the least expensive source.

However, knowing what I now know about what’s called sterile compounding – the process for making something you inject in your body SAFE to do – which I learned all about when I recently visited an hCG pharmacy in person – if I were to be losing weight now, I would most likely use a U.S. source.When you inject something in your body, you are bypassing the majority of your body’s defense mechanism for protecting itself against something bad (if the substance were to contain a virus, or bacteria, etc.) When you eat a strawberry and half of it’s partially decayed, it tastes nasty, but nothing bad happens in your body because it does through your digestive system where your body destroys stuff and prevents you from getting sick. When you inject stuff, you are skipping this step, and so it’s much more important that what you inject is truly STERILE or not tainted in any way.

I want to start off the answer to this question first by saying I’ve purchased hCG from overseas several times and never had an incident of fraud or identity theft or any other horrible thing through the sites I’ve mentioned to purchase hCG. But there are certainly some things you can keep in mind just to keep yourself and your assets extra safe should anything like that ever happen.

Use a Credit Card that is NOT linked to a bank account

This is actually great advice from Tim Feriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek. He states, “never use debit cards for online transactions….Reversing unauthorized credit card charges, particularly with American Express, is painless and near instantaneous. Recovering funds withdrawn from your checking account via unauthorized debit card use takes dozens of hours in paperwork alone and can take months to receive, if approved at all.”

I had this exact experience actually, totally unrelated to hCG thankfully. I pretty much always use a regular credit card for online purchases, but for some reason we were using our debit card for a time. Somehow, someone in China ended up buying plane tickets for like $1700 to some other foreign land and also subscribed to some not so classy websites. It really did take hours and hours of paperwork and several weeks for the money to get put back into our account. In the meantime, we were left having the problem of needing to use that $1700 that was taken but not having it.

However, when we use our credit cards, not linked to any bank account, anytime there has been the slightest problem, they take care of it immediately and there are no “funds off limits” if you will while they investigate the matter.

Remember, this doesn’t happen frequently, but be prepared by using credit cards for online purchases, not debit cards or cards linked to a bank account.

I get this question a lot, and I’m just going to be perfectly honest- I have used 5 different brands of hCG myself in my 5 rounds of hCG, and guess what? They all worked perfectly fine. So I really don’t have a preference. I promise, I really don’t. Just make sure you purchase the real thing, RX hCG- that’s all that really matters. The 4 sources that I recommend I can vouch for as being real, high quality prescription hCG.

Can you take a look at the ingredients on your bottle of hCG drops? There are basically three types of “hCG” out there now.

1. Prescription hCG – the real hormone
2. Homeopathic hCG – if it’s true homeopathic hCG it will contain something like “hCG – 10x, 30x, 60x, etc type numbers)
3. hCG Activator products – these do not contain any hCG at all, but contain amino acids. It’s claimed these these amino acids cause your body to make hCG. I do not know if I believe this at this point you guys. I like to keep an open mind.

When it comes down to it, my personal choice is that I really only feel comfortable using prescription hCG, the real hormone. One example given to me was the question, “would you feel comfortable taking homeopathic birth control?” Hmmm. Hormones are powerful! I do not think the hCG hormone is a placebo so, so the muscle sparing effects that hCG seems to create in the presence of such a low calorie diet is very important to me. However, I have to admit that I have seen some great results with homeopathic hCG as well, so I can’t knock it completely, and some choose to go this route and feel completely comfortable with it. I have not seen enough feedback from these hCG activator products (that don’t contain hCG) to feel comfortable recommending them at this time. The truth is, anyone will lose weight on a 500 calorie, regardless of taking any supplement or hormone.

The questions are:
1. how much of that weight loss is fat vs. muscle,
2. how is your hunger while ON the diet itself, and
3. how will the diet effect your metabolism during and after the diet (and thus ability to maintain)?

To me the hCG hormone is what kind of guarantees a positive answer to these questions, whereas I do not have proof of such with the other hCG type products at this time. The others MAY work, I just can’t be sure, and I feel best sticking with what I know can be relied on since I only have one body and no time for do-overs.

The current sources for real prescription hCG that I feel comfortable recommending, if you end up choosing to go that route, can be found here: http://hcgchica.com/buy-hcg-injections-worldwide/
And all my tutorials for injections are here to help you with mixing and injecting!: http://hcgchica.com/hcg-injections-tutorials/

Shipping of Hcg Questions (2)

I would make allowance for a 3 week shipping time in general. My hCG has come in 10 business days, and there are a few who have had to wait as long as a month due to delays in customs. They do have an expedited shipping option, and I believe one person who chose this option got their hCG within 7 business days- the expedited option costs about $20 more.

Why so long? Well, this hCG is coming from overseas and has to go through customs, and that it why it’s not as simple or quick as purchasing from within the United States. If you are concerned about this and need a quick turn around time, then USHcginjections would be a better choice for you, as their hCG is both made and shipped from within the United States.

Common Concerns about the Hcg Diet (14)

I don’t feel that there is enough information to be dogmatic about this topic, so I will share just a few key points to think about to help you make your own personal decision regarding this. We’ll discuss why hCG Injections are the best form to use for the hCG Diet, the case against rx hCG Drops, but why I personally do not dismiss rx hCG Drops entirely despite this.

The final deciding factor for me is:

How sure do you want to be?

I figure I only have one body (count it, 1, uno), so I’m going to do what I can be positive of will produce the results I desire. I don’t have another body, nor the time, mental or emotional strength to risk screwing it up and re-doing it (not that I’ve never screwed up on hCG, but you know what I mean!)

hCG Injections- Why I feel they are a superior form of hCG Delivery

The nice thing about hCG injections and the reason I personally stick with them is:

You can be 100% sure that you getting the exact therapeutic dose of hCG that you are supposed to get- there is no room for lost hCG due to not holding it under your tongue long enough or swallowing too much of it where it’s simply destroyed by stomach acids. I want to be SURE.

You don’t have to be concerned about the size of the hCG particles, etc. because you are injecting the hormone, therefore it WILL be in your bloodstream, in the proper amount, doing what it’s supposed to do with no questions. Even those who claim hCG doesn’t work won’t deny that hCG IS a hormone and that you can inject it and then see measurable hCG hormone levels in the blood. I want to be SURE.

All the hydrostatic and DEXA scan body fat testing that has been done on hCG dieters (that I’ve seen anyway) that shows a higher percentage of fat loss has been on those using hCG injections. I want to be SURE.

The Case Against Rx Drops/Sublingual hCG

Some of the articles online have stated that the hCG particles themselve are too large to be taken sublingually- that the hCG cannot be absorbed by the oral mucosa, thus is not a reliable method of hCG delivery. This could mean you may find yourself doing the hCG diet without any real hCG present in your system, which obviously is something you wouldn’t want, since hCG really isn’t a placebo.

Articles worth reading related to this are here:

http://deepdownwellness.com/ddw/?p=354 In his article, one important thing he states is that, “There are no published reports that have been able to demonstrate a measurable amount of HCG in a person’s blood when given in either oral or sublingual forms.

Www.hcgobesity.org contains information regarding a double blind study that D. Belluscio did using oral hCG. He actually claims based on the results that the oral hCG was effective, however, it was also noted that, “on treatment days 0, 15 and 30 we have tested all volunteers, screening for the presence of plasmatic b-hCG. Concentrations were undetectable in all cases (data not shown).” So basically, no hCG was actually detected in the subject’s bloodstream while taking sublingual hCG. So no hCG was found in the subjects, therefore, the patients didn’t absorb any of the hCG right?

For those who do believe in the use and effectiveness of oral hCG, it IS definitely known with surety that not nearly as much hCG is absorbed by the body (if at all) by this method, thus the reason that you must take 2-3x’s as much hCG in the sublingual form than in the injection form. For instance, I inject 125ius of hCG by injection and feel no hunger. An oral hCG rx drops user must place 332iu’s of hCG per day total in order to experience the same hunger free state. That’s 2.5x’s as much hCG being needed.

Why I Still Can’t Dismiss Oral hCG Completely

Because I’ve seen it work in real people! I may not have all the scientific proof to back up a statement that, “yes, oral hCG works”, and maybe there is “proof” that “oral hCG cannot be absorbed.” But you know what? I have also seen supposed “proof” that hCG doesn’t work at all for weightloss. And yet I have my own concrete proof that hCG does work for weightloss, and there is no medical document, study, or person with Phd or Md at the end his/her name who could ever convince me otherwise- because I have experienced and proved through reliable testing that I have lost a huge amount of fat through the use of the hCG hormone- almost 40lbs worth now in fact. Of FAT. 40 lbs of FAT. Moving on…..

Why you can’t always trust supposed “proof”

It can be difficult to read through all the material online claiming A and B is proof of X and Y. Why? Because there are so many factors that go into making a piece of information true proof, and there may easily be things that were glossed over, or not mentioned, or not considered, etc.

So yes I’ve read the hCG particle are too large to absorb- but what do I then do with the many people I’ve actually SEEN lose weight well while using oral hCG, feel not hungry, keep the weight off, and they look fantastic (ie. it’s obvious they didn’t starve away mostly muscle by seeing how well balanced the form of their body looks). Our eyes often can tell us the truth about a matter, whereas the written word can be twisted by others to deceive us to meet someone else’s ends.

Real results/real people has merit

In the end I find myself most often taking real-world real-people results over supposed “medical facts.”

This is not to say that I don’t believe in proof. Certainly not- but it has to be REAL proof. For instance, when I have my body fat tested hydrostatically before and after doing the hCG diet, and it shows that I lost 80% fat, to me that is true proof of something. Would I have lost that much fat had I not been using the hCG hormone? I’m almost 100% sure not. But then again, I’ve never tried to live on 500 calories without hCG and then had my body fat tested either. I suppose that would be the ultimate proof.

100% Sure = hCGChica Uses Only hCG Injections

All this said, I personally choose to stick with hCG Injections. Why? Because I want to be sure of my results. Like I said in the beginning, I only have 1 body folks! I don’t want to mess with chances that are too high. It is known that hCG is definitely not absorbed as well orally and that is why double the amount, sometimes triple the amount of hCG has to be taken when used in sublingual form because IF the hCG gets absorbed, it’s only a small fraction. Everyone in the hCG community acknowledges this. I don’t like to put that much to chance when my body, my health, and my resulting capabilities in life are on the line.

I was afraid of injections when I first considered doing the hCG diet plan too. I had no intention of doing them. But guess what? It turns out they didn’t hurt at all! I promise. It’s more of a mental thing than anything else.

For those who just can’t get past the injection issue, you are a free agent- you should be able to do whatever you want on this topic without judgment.

One type of fertility treatment given at fertility clinics is a large dose of hCG– usually 5000iu in one shot- to aid the ability of getting pregnant. I know because a dear friend of mine did this in her quest to have a baby. She does have a little 2 year old too now btw. I’m not saying the hCG diet will help you get pregnant, because that I don’t know- the hCG taken while on the diet is a very tiny amount compared to the large doses given in fertility treatments. But the other weird thing I have seen that seems to happen a little too frequently to be chance is women, especially women who had trouble getting pregnant for years, suddenly becoming pregnant either while on, or after, the hCG Diet.

I’m not joking about that. I’m not saying it factually will help pregnancy, but I highly doubt it would hinder it considering the above.

This is my observation- how much lose skin you experience seems to be highly genetic. The elasticity of a person’s skin really varies. I wouldn’t even say it necessarily depends on how much weight is lost because I have seen women who’ve lost over 80 lbs have no visible excess skin (by “visible” I mean they state they have a little, but on their youtube videos from a short distance it’s not obviously apparent), and I have seen women who have a lot of excess skin (because they so bravely bared their lovely extra skin on youtube for us all).

I have lost 54 lbs with the hCG Diet, and I have so little excess skin that I can’t even really speak of it- literally just a tiny bit on my belly area. That’s it.

Overall, it seems that excess skin is far better when weight is lost with the hCG Diet than lost with other diets. Hormones are really quite powerful- where do you think many women get that wonderful “glow” from when they are pregnant? Or conversely, what do you think causes nasty breakouts all over your body for some pregnant women? Hormones! hCG is a hormone, and as such, the capabilities within your body will really change as opposed to just being on your own without the hormone. I am not alone is saying that excess skin is better overall with hCG.

Alas, this still doesn’t mean no one will have excess skin. Several hCGers I have seen are considering follow up cosmetic surgery to get rid of it. And that’s the thing. I don’t believe ANY lotion can make POUNDS of skin just disappear. Wishful thinking folks. So if you are one of those people who has a lot of excess skin, it seems that surgery is the only way to really correct this.

If you have only a little excess skin, I think working out can help “fill” you out a bit- fat and skin always lies more nicely over some well-formed muscle.

Other than that, most of us who choose to do the hCG protocol have come to the conclusion that we have the choice to of 2 evils- having a lot of excess fat or excess skin- in the end, the majority of us choose to lose the fat as that is the real health-issue and it’s often easier to hide a little excess skin but harder to hide a much larger pants size.

I hope that helps a little. Overall people seem to look pretty darn good to me after their weightloss with hCG.

The only reliable way to track body fat percent and how much actual fat you lose is through 3 forms of actual testing (no app, scale, or monitor can do this for you accurately):
1. Hydrostatic body fat testing
2. DEXA scan
3. Bod Pod

You might search these three choices in google and your location to see if you can find something near to you. All my body fat percent stats that I discuss on my blog are from hydrostatic body fat testing. This type of proof can’t be argued. I have posted my actual tests results in several places on my blog, in case you care to share it with them.

For instance, this post shows the bodyfat percent I started with, what I got down to with hCG and how Crossfit played into it:
http://hcgchica.com/maintaining-hcg-diet-weight-loss-hcgchica-update-2nd-quarter-2014/

In a nutshell, a very large percentage of my weight loss was indeed fat, as proven by multiple hydrostatic body fat tests. I started the hCG diet with 59 lbs of fat on my body. Being 5’1″ that is a LOT. Today I have 21 lbs of fat on my body, even 2 years later after finishing the hCG protocol. That’s almost 40 lbs of actual fat, proven by hydrostatic testing that I not only lost, but that I continue to keep off. This fat loss was achieved solely with prescription hCG injections.

Now, just to be clear, I CAN NOT speak for the amount of fat loss achieved with anything but the injections. I have never used prescription drops, homeopathic drops, or hCG “activator”. Whether these work equally well I just don’t know. The one thing I can be sure of though is the injections, which is why I continue to feel most comfortable recommending this method.

First of all, hCG CAN and does test positive on pregnancy tests. So what I am about to say below applies ONLY to the current recommended sources for real prescription hCG on my blog. If you are having trouble getting hCG to test positive on a pregnancy test from any other source, I cannot vouch for those companies because I have not investigated them. One thing you should know however is that you cannot buy real hCG – the actual hormone – over the counter- so if you purchase something at GNA or Walmart, etc., you are not purchasing the real hormone. If that is what you intended, great. But I just wanted to clarify that for anyone who wasn’t sure.

This is significant because there are plenty of bottles of hCG out there that aren’t the real hormone, and if the real hormone is what you desired, well then it’s nice to have a way to prove this. So again, the following I’m about to discuss only applies to the 4 companies currently on my blog that I’ve personally interacted with and know to be true hCG.

To give you another quick example of how hCG is quite frequently improperly tested, check out this facebook comment:

“I found a pregnancy test and decided to test mine. It was the pee on kind. Knowing a days worth of injection wouldn’t be enough I broke it open. I put the injection on the tablet and put it back together. Nothing changed. So I put the end under the faucet and put water on it to move everything forward and the lines lit up. So mine is positive.”

If she had stopped at her first efforts, she would have thought her hCG was negative. This happens all the time you guys. It’s easier these days to just make sure to purchase hCG from a qualified source since the pregnancy testing is really just proving to be unreliable.

The sources that are on my blog are real prescription hCG, I have made sure of this- I do not recommend any company on my buy hCG page without fully communicating with them first. This is extremely important to me because I do not believe hCG is a placebo, and I would only use the real thing on myself, so I have made sure these sources are real. The sources in the U.S. – Nu Image, US hCG, and Advance hCG, all use the same compounding pharmacies that any weight loss clinic uses to make and dispense the prescription hCG.

To feel completely secure, 2 of the sources on my site I have actually met with in person and visited some of the pharmacies they use where the actual hCG is produced now (because I really do care about you guys and that you see the proof too!) You can see highlights of on of my trips below. The pharmacies I visited in person were for Nu Image and US hCG Shots.

I can’t be SURE how things will turn out, but this is the recent experience of an hCGer who wrote in to me about this.

She was on Phase 2 using hCG injections and wondered how TSA would view all this. Here’s her response:

“No problems with TSA. Syringes in carrying bag. My hCG vial was inside a prescription bottle with a label on it. I put it the bin so they could see it. No issues.”

So she was able to bring both her hCG in it’s prescription bottle, along with her injection needles/syringes themselves, on board the plane. Whether this will always be the case I’m not sure and I don’t know how much a role the prescription being clearly on the bottle makes a difference – I think it may – which means that if you’re going to be traveling you probably want to make sure that you have hCG from a U.S. source that will have the prescription on the bottle. If you had hCG from overseas, which does not have a prescription label on it, the outcome could be different.

I think the reason this worked out for her is because no doubt there are many diabetics who must take insulin shots and they have to be able to have these on the plane- these are the exact same syringes used for hCG.

Be careful with this. Some do, and some use things like smooth move tea and such – but these things can dehydrate you as far as I know and cause more fluctuations later and mess up your own body’s natural peristalsis. You might try more natural methods first like:

pysllium husk (be careful with this one! When just starting it you want to start SMALL and make sure to drink proper amount of water with it otherwise you will have opposite problem and be even more constipated – but with enough water and gradual increase, the fiber really helps keep things moving in your colon) and

lemon water.

These tools really can be very effective, and you don’t usually need to do them all. Higher dosages of probiotics by themselves, or higher doses of the magnesium, by itself, has been able to completely get rid of my constipation. Don’t go hog wild your first day, but for instance me, I would take maybe a double dose of what is recommended on label), I have found this to REALLY fix constipation issues, and it seems to do it in a more natural way that doesn’t cause other additional issues later.

This can be tough. While there are many people we do not need to tell about what we’re doing, it’s nice to be able to include family in what we’re doing, one cuz they’re family, two, because they can be a source of support (sometimes), and three, it’s rather hard to hide something like that from the people you eat with every day.

So what do you do in a situation like this where someone close to you is really against the idea?

I don’t know if this will help, but perhaps showing the logic behind it – even perhaps written out, could help. I have gone to great lengths now to try to prove that this protocol is NOT a starvation diet and is not stripping every last bit of muscle off your body.

A few sources from my blog that demonstrate some proof that skeptical family members might find useful:

My bodyfat testing:

Before hCG, After finishing hCG, and 2 years after finishing hCG. It’s clear from these hydrostatic body fat tests, which is a very clear, accurate, reliable way to test body fat that body builders and other fitness enthusiasts use to track their progress, that not only was the majority of my weight loss fat, I have a healthy amount of muscle mass for my height (5’1″) and this combined with the fact that I have maintained this for what was at that time, 2 years, shows that my metabolism wasn’t not hampered negatively.

The argument for hormones. hCG is a hormone. Just like the hormones in birth control are powerful enough to prevent conception, hCG is not a placebo.

I realize that sometimes if a person is not in the mood to believe something, it doesn’t matter how logical you are, they’re just going to think what they want to think. But perhaps for some, this type of proof might be convincing.

There are probably various reasons that people don’t like the idea of this protocol. Some have something against accomplishing something faster than the traditional way. But if the weight being lost is indeed fat, and ability to maintain is there shown by others, why would accomplishing something in a more efficient manner be a bad thing? Washing machine? Why yes! I’d love one. Don’t got time for the clothesline in twenty-fifteen. Times have changed and our lives are hectic, busy and stressful. It makes sense to be efficient where we can, so that we can use our time for other things that can’t be rushed- like family time! ?

Unless you are a professional athlete (where hCG might be used to enhance performance in some way and wouldn’t be allowed), drug screenings for employment and such will never test for hCG because hCG is not a narcotic or recreational drug​. So you’re safe! Unless you’re a professional athlete….which if you’re here at my blog, you probably aren’t. :)-

Sometimes I am asked about whether someone should do another 500 calorie diet with a product aside from the hCG hormone because of their experience with hair loss on hCG.

Let me share what I believe to be the case and of course in the end, you do what you feel is best for you!

The hair loss has nothing to do with hCG, it has to do with the fast weight loss. So any diet that causes rapid/fast weight loss may cause hair loss. That said, I believe the hCG hormone has great protecting effects when it comes to protecting lean muscle while on such a low calorie diet, so I would personally never feel comfortable eating a 500 calorie diet without the hormone. I feel the potential of adverse effects and hair loss would actually be worse on a low calorie diet like that without it.

I could be wrong about this, but if you research side effects of rapid weight loss you’ll see hair loss is one of them.

This is the very question I wondered to myself when I first started researching Hcg. What I can tell you is this. I have had my bodyfat tested before and after all 4 rounds of Hcg that I have done. I too am very concerned with losing fat, not muscle, and (thankfully), I have found Hcg to do what it’s supposed to do. If it didn’t I would not only no longer recommend it, I certainly wouldn’t be doing the diet myself anymore.

My Proof: After Round 3, my hydrostatic body fat test showed that 77% of my weightloss was fat. This equates to 16.51 pounds out of 21.2 lbs total being fat. Round 4 my Dexa scan showed that 88% of the weight I lost was fat. This equates to 5.89 pounds of fat, and .79 lbs of muscle out of the 6.68 lbs lost total that round. Not only this, but I easily regained the small amount of muscle I lost in a very short time with Crossfit. If Hcg were truly a starvation diet as many claim, the proof of my high percentage of fat loss on the diet would not be possible.

However, after my very first round of the Hcg diet, I did have a lot of muscle loss. My hydrostatic test results showed that only 34% of my weightloss was fat. That equates to only 8.73 lbs of fat out of 25 lbs total lost, the other 16.27 lbs being muscle. Yikes! Why the difference??? Don’t let this scare you away- let’s just address it in the next question…

I have lost both 88% fat and 34% fat on the Hcg diet, as I noted in the question above. This will be a bit of a long answer because there are few things to consider that I need to share with you. The only time I experienced what I would call a high level of muscle loss was on my 1st Round of Hcg. All subsequent rounds of Hcg (all 4 of them) I have had a high percentage of fat loss that I’ll venture to say is impossible to beat on any other diet, in the time frame that Hcg accomplishes it. But why the difference?

First of all, I have to give you my real-world experience of maintaining my weight loss after Round 1. I had no problem- really. It was so easy. I easily maintained my weightloss, despite losing so much muscle, during the following 3 months until I started Round 2 of Hcg. This was very surprising to me, because usually this much muscle loss would seemingly create a rebound of fast weight gain due to “slowed metabolism” and the body’s need to recover all that muscle. I ate lots of healthy high fat, low carb food, didn’t count calories, and was eating way more than the oft quoted “1200 calories” that many feel they must eat to maintain their weightloss.

This leads me to believe that Hcg DOES prevent the loss of necessary muscle. You see, when you are overweight, not all of your weight gain is fat. Your body will naturally acquire some muscle along with the fat gain, in order to help your body carry that extra fat your frame is carrying around so you can still sit down, stand up, walk around, etc. If you are severely overweight you will have a lot of extra muscle that another person of your height, who is not overweight, won’t have. Example/Proof: I am 5’1″. A normal weight range for my height and frame size is anywhere between 106-118 pounds according to this life insurance chart. When I first started Hcg I weighed 171 pounds and had 112 pounds of muscle. So, if I had kept ALL my muscle through my weightloss journey, and got to a normal weight of, let’s be generous and use the high end of 118 pounds, that would mean that at 118 pounds, only 6 pounds of me was fat (since 112 pounds of me is muscle). This would then mean that my bodyfat percent would be 5.1%. According to the ACE bodyfat percentage chart, this would mean that I was near death- that is not enough fat for my body to carry out it’s important natural processes to keep me alive and healthy. While there is varying information out there on what constitutes the minimum essential fat for women, one thing they all agree on is that 5% is far too low. The very lowest body fat percent for a woman that I’ve seen any organization mention while still maintaining proper health is 8%, and most organizations put minimum bodyfat percent for women between 10-13%. And this is just for what’s considered essential fat. Very few women attain that low of a body fat percent, and most women who are fit and healthy will have a body fat percent anywhere from 18-25%. Here is an excellent post on body fat percent by Builtlean. If we were to take it a step farther and say I was at the low end of a healthy weight for my height on that weight chart, at 106 pounds, that would mean I would have more muscle than my actual scale weight, which is physically not possible of course, so I would be dead lol.

Soooo, while yeah at first I freaked out when I realized I’d lost so much muscle the 1st round, after research and a look at the facts, I realized in order to be a normal weight on the scale for my height, and to have a normal amount of muscle mass for a person of my height, I would actually need to lose some muscle, as you can see from my explanation above. The fact that my body stabilized and kept the weight off so easily only confirms that it was the natural course of events for my body. As I continued to lose more weight with the Hcg Diet, my fat loss percentage was much higher, as I now had closer to the normal range of muscle for someone of my height.

The takeaway point here is that I believe after seeing the proof from my body fat testing, that Hcg will cause you to lose weight in the proper way and in the proper proportions to lead you to the most balanced look for your height and health. If you have taken any time yet to look at before and after photos of people who have finished losing weight with Hcg, you will probably be struck, as I was, at how well proportioned the individuals are. To be honest, for me anyway, this is far better proof than any statistical information. It was viewing the myriads of before and after Hcg photos and me thinking time and time again ‘man she looks great!’ that made me feel more confident to try the Hcg protocol out.

This all said, lets discuss one more question on this topic of Hcg and muscle loss…..

With everything said about normal body fat percents, normal scale weights, and normal amounts of muscle mass for a given height, etc etc etc that I talked about in the last question, it’s still important for me to mention a few things that could possibly cause you to lose more muscle than is necessary on the Hcg diet.

You see, not too many people have their body fat tested on the Hcg Diet. In fact, as of this moment, I don’t know any woman who has taken before and after body fat tests through Hydrostatic or DEXA Scan means for multiple rounds of Hcg as I have (if you’re out there, please email me! I want to hear your results!) So I really only have mostly myself to go off of. I do know that the few woman who are having their body fat tested (or are using the Handheld Omron Body Fat Monitor- read this if you want to know if this monitor is accurate) seem to have similar fat loss results as I’ve had in my later rounds- ie. 70-90% fat loss- which is fantastic.

So while in theory after looking at my statistical information regarding how my body most likely had to lose some muscle at the beginning, I still can’t be sure that some of it wasn’t preventable. The reason for this is because I deviated from Dr. Simeons original protocol in an uniformed way the first time I did Hcg. I drank Diet Coke almost every day. I had what’s called “Chocolate Delight” everyday, which incorporatees the use of Coconut Oil, which if Dr. Simeons were still alive, would have been a no-no to him because all oils and fats on the diet are strictly prohibited under the original diet plan. It appears that the Hcg hormone makes fats, for lack of a better word, volatile, whether it’s going in or coming out of your body. Anyone who has done the Hcg protocol and cheated while on the diet is very well aware how much more rapidly one gains not just weight, but fat, than if they had eaten the same foods off of Hcg (insert memory of my porkchop cheat…sigh). I wish we knew more specifically just what’s happening inside the body with Hcg and fat- it appears to pretty vague still- all we see are the results that it produces.

It’s important that if you are going to make any alterations to the original Hcg diet as written, that you do it in an informed way. I do think it’s very possibly that inadvertent muscle loss could be caused by some of the deviations that many have made on Hcg, myself included. Some have tried including fats in the Hcg diet. What’s known as egg days (eating 6 eggs for the whole day), modified fat fast days (1200 calories for the day, 75-90% fat content). I can’t be sure of this, but it’s possible that days like these are actually causing excess muscle loss. I’m not saying this 100% for sure causes extra muscle loss, I’m just saying, if you choose to make modifications to the diet, be cautious about it. The reason I am leery myself of including fats while on the Hcg diet is because while using my Omron Handheld Body Fat Monitor daily I found when I tried these modified days- the egg day and the fat fast day, I would lose weight on the scale the following day perhaps by a pound or pound and a half, however my body fat monitor would show that my fat had actually increased by 1-2 pounds! Obviously this is not enough to prove anything, but it’s enough to give cause for pause. Further research really needs to be done in these areas to see if it was just a fluke, or if taking in fats on Hcg can cause problems.

My advice is, if you are embarking on your first round of Hcg especially, try to follow the original protocol to be on the safe side. I really do believe Hcg will do the right thing by your body if you don’t transgress some of the main rules of the diet, one of which is avoiding fats and oils. That said, I have made modifications to the protocol myself since then and still had a high level of fat loss- this is what I call making informed decisions on the diet- and I will share these with you in another section. Is it possible that fats don’t cause extra muscle loss on Hcg? Certainly. The question is, are you in the position to be the one to be the “experiment” or do you need to just safely lose as much FAT as possible so you can be healthy and happy soon? If you are ready to make yourself a living experiment, by all means do so! Collect before and after body fat testing and share your results with me! But the point is, don’t just throw in fat fast days or egg days because your bored or the diet feels hard. You could be harming yourself on the diet if you do this haphazardly. Hcg is meant to be used short-term to achieve some amazing fat loss results, so that you can move on with your life afterwards armed with your new, healthier eating habits and be in a better place with your body for the long haul.

As with most things I’ve said, there’s an aside here, and that is that I have personally made quite a few changes to the original protocol on several of my rounds, while monitoring my body fat percent and fat loss vs. muscle loss via the Handheld Body Fat Monitor (see my post on this here), and have continued to experience a high percentage of fat loss. I will discuss those changes in another section.

Loading on Hcg (6)

How much weight you gain while loading on the hCG diet is highly individual, but there are few things that I have observed in watching many people on youtube do the hCG Diet and in my own rounds of hCG that contribute to this.

– First time loaders:
If this is your first time loading on the hCG Diet, you may find that your loading gain is minimal, usually in the 1-4lb range. What??? How can I say 4 lbs is minimal? Well, as you’ll soon see my hCG friend, 4 lbs is nothing to the hCG hormone- if you gain 4 lbs loading, you will most likely lose most, if not all of that, after your very first VLCD (very low calorie day). Why are loading gains on the first round of hCG usually minimal though? A couple reasons this could be is that loading weight is typically at least partially water retention. New loaders who perhaps may have been already eating a salty, high fat, or sugary diet before starting the hCG Diet (this was me) most likely are already carrying excess water weight, so there is no inflated gain from extra water weight from suddenly increasing fat/sugar/salt while loading- you have already been eating like this (I was). As an example, I only gained .8 lbs loading for my first round of hCG. And believe me, I did load well- cartons of ice-cream, the whole nine yards. It seems like first time loaders usually gain somewhere between 1-4 lbs loading (sometimes called gorging) for hCG.

– Subsequent rounds of hCG:
I have also noticed that a large percentage of people who load for the hCG diet (the traditional way with starches and sugars included- more on that in a minute) on subsequent rounds seem to gain more- sometimes quite a bit more. I have seen loading gains of 6-9 lbs for subsequent round loaders. I can’t be sure of the reason for this, but one of my guesses is that those who are loading for 2nd, 3rd, 4th rounds, etc. have often been eating a very healthy diet during P3 and P4, between rounds, and thus are not carrying around extra water weight or having excess water retention because of this healthy diet. Thus the sudden enormous increase in carbs and sugar while loading causes a fair amount of water retention, inflating their loading weight (ie. a person who gains 9 lbs loading did NOT gain 9 lbs of fat in 2 days-I’m pretty sure that’s totally impossible). Additionally it’s possible the hCG hormone itself is more easily recognized by a person’s body after the first round and perhaps get’s “into their system” more quickly than before. These are just my ideas- not fact by any means, but the truth is, traditional loaders (loading with sugar and carbs included) does cause larger loading gains on future rounds from what I’ve seen.

– Loading “clean” or loading “dirty”:
This definitely will play a role in how much weight you gain loading for hCG. I have loaded what can be called “clean” or “low carb” for the last 3 hCG rounds. This means loading on only high fat, high protein foods and leaving carbs and sugar out of the picture entirely. Loading clean will result in the smallest amount of loading gain. What does clean or low carb loading on hCG look like? Watch my vlog for Round 5 loading on this. I ate 4000 calories and 300 grams of fat EACH day while loading, but did it “clean” and only gained a net of 1.6lbs loading (and this was at my current weight then of 132 pounds). You can see the actual report of what I ate for loading here.

– Loading with sugars and carbs included:
This is the traditional way to load, where you just eat whatever you want while you load the 2 days, just in larger amounts than usual, but still with a focus on making sure the food items are high in fat. This could include things like pizza, ice-cream, cake, donuts, etc. Dr. Simeons did make it clear however that the purpose of loading is to get a high amount of fats into your system, but he made no restriction as to how the fats were taken in and even mentioned some of the aforementioned foods himself as possible options. You can, and many do, load for the hCG Diet, this way, and if that is what you want to do, do not attach any guilt to it. It’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do while you load for hCG- Dr. Simeons himself said so! That said, you will experience the most loading gain, especially on subsequent rounds, when you load this way.

So how soon will you lose the weight you gain loading on the hCG Diet? This of course depends partially on how much weight you gain while loading for hCG. In general though, you can usually expect to lose all the weight you gain from loading on hCG within 2-3 days of starting the VLCD (very low calorie days) of the diet. Most of the time I would say 2 days. Less often, 3 days. If you load “clean” (low carb with just high fats and proteins and no sugars or starches) you will most likely lose all your load weight in 1 day.

My personal hCG loading and hCG losing stats:

How much weight I gained loading on each hCG Round and how much weight I lost the 1st two days of the diet.
Time it took to lose my loading weight: 1 day

Round 1:
Load: +0.8
VLCD 1: -1.8
VLCD 2: -1.8

Totals: Lost all load weight + new weight after the 1st very low calorie day.

Round 2:
(3 day load)
Load: +3.6
VLCD 1: -3.4
VLCD 2: -1.8

Totals: Lost all but .2 of the loading weight in 1 day.

Round 3:
(clean load)
Load: +0.6
VLCD 1: -2.2
VLCD 2: -1.2

Totals: Lost all load weight + new weight after 1st day on the low calorie part of the hCG Diet

Round 4:
(clean load)
Load: +1.0
VLCD 1: -2.2
VLCD 2: -0.2

Totals: Lost all load weight + new weight after 1st day on the low calorie part of the hCG Diet

Round 5:
(clean load)
Load: +1.6
VLCD 1: -2.0
VLCD 2: -0.6

Totals: Lost all load new weight after 1st day on the low calorie part of the hCG Diet.

I should mention: for those loading on their 2nd, 3rd rounds and beyond, sometimes individuals seem to gain more weight than usual when they load the normal way (with starches and sugars as part of it), and at times I’ve seen it take quite some time to get this load weight off- like 6-12 days! Thankfully this is not what normally happens, but for me this is all the more reason to load what I call “clean” or low carb. I load without starches and sugars, and my loading gains are always minimal when done this way and always come off in 1-2 days. I definitely don’t want to spend half my round losing loading weight. Again, this isn’t what normally happens, but I have seen it and I don’t know why it occurs.

Here is a photo showing what I consumed during the 2 days of my last clean load:

Reasons I chose to load low carb for the past 3 rounds:

I loaded on whatever I wanted my first 2 rounds which included all the “fun” things like ice-cream and chocolate cake. My last 3 rounds I chose to load “clean” aka “low carb” and for myself only this is what I’ll continue to stick with for any future rounds. There were a couple of reasons for my decision and why I’ve done it for 3 rounds now.

Reason #1- Loading on sugars and carbs was too like my previous eating disorder.
The very first reason I ended up deciding to load clean for the hCG diet on Round 3 was because loading “dirty” on round 2 led me back into my binge eating mentality and it wasn’t a healthy thing for me to do mentally. I used to have a binge eating disorder and that load set me off on a 9 week binge eating rant. After that I realized that never again could I EVER binge on those types of foods for any reason whatsoever. That’s a pathway in my brain I must block off forever.

Reason #2- Get into Ketosis and Fat Burning Mode Faster
But I also had a couple other ideas in mind when deciding to load clean and the cool thing was things panned out just as I had planned- I did some research on getting into ketosis, etc, stuff like that, and decided to eat low carb for a week and half prior to starting hCG, then load low-carb, then hope to be in ketosis (fat burning mode) right away- and guess what I was! I am always in ketosis after the first VLCD (very low calorie diet) day now. I kind of feel like this helps me make the best use of time while on the hCG Diet because my body is already burning fats right from the get go instead of having a bunch of carbs and glycogen stores to burn through first- I don’t know I could be wrong about that- that’s just my theory. So far seems to work good for me so I’ll stick with it.

Reason #3- First Few Days of Diet Feel Much Easier– Far Less Cravings and Hunger
Thirdly, I have found the first few days on VLCD are MUCH more manageable now that I’m no longer having huge carb/sugar withdrawals when making the big change from Loading to eating super low calorie. I noticed when loading with carbs and sugars included that I would feel much more hungry and have a lot more cravings those first few vlcd’s which wasn’t fun at all.

Should YOU load clean for the hCG Diet?

That all said, loading however you want is a free choice and you should be entitled to load how you want with no guilt! I have just found this to my favorite way to load for the above reasons. I started out doing hCG expecting just a little, then realized how far it could get me, so I started getting more scientific and strategic about it.

What the purpose is NOT:

I’m quoting a section from an hCG site here (we’ll keep them anonymous so they won’t feel embarrassed): loading ” also makes you get your fill of those foods you can’t have while on the VLCD (very low calorie diet) portion of the diet. It really makes you not want those foods for a while and keep you from wanting to cheat.” I’m sorry- that’s total BALONEY.

When I have loaded with sugars and carbs as part of the picture, I am only turned off to those foods for about 15 hours while I’m still stuffed. As soon as 3pm on the very first very low calorie day hits, I’m reading to stick my face right back into a cake again. If I get 10 people to email me and tell me they have experienced otherwise, I’ll remove this section. Otherwise, I think it’s foolish to think that binging will cause you to not want to binge. That never happened to me in over a year of having a binge eating disorder. As soon as the food was digested, I was ready for more. Anyone else?

What is the true purpose of loading for the hCG Diet?

Sometimes referred to as “fat loading” or gorging, loading has to do with eating high amount of fat for some reason right? While taking the hCG hormone. To be honest I still haven’t read a totally clear 100% “this-is-exactly-what-is-happening-when-you-load-on-hCG” reason. But it’s worth noting what 2 actual authorities on the hCG Diet have state regarding this topic.

The first is Dr. Simeons himself. Here is what he stated in his book Pounds and Inches about loading on the hCG Diet: “One cannot keep a patient comfortably on 500 Calories unless his normal fat reserves are reasonably well stocked. It is for this reason also that every case, even those that are actually gaining must eat to capacity of the most fattening food they can get down until they have had the third injection. It is a fundamental mistake to put a patient on 500 Calories as soon as the injections are started, as it seems to take about three injections before abnormally deposited fat begins to circulate and thus become available. We distinguish between the first three injections, which we call “non-effective” as far as the loss of weight is concerned, and the subsequent injections given while the patient is dieting, which we call “effective”.”

The second is Robin Woodall, author of Weight-Loss Apocalypse: Emotional Eating Rehab Through the hCG Protocol. In her book she states regarding fat loading, “the relationship between the small dose of hCG and fat’s stimulation of leptin requires three days of forced-feeding. Eating high fat foods to full capacity during those days acts as a catalyst, ensuring sufficient blood leptin is stimulated by the fourth days that warrants the drastic drop to the 500-calorie protocol.”

Please note Robin advocates a 3 day load, whereas Dr. Simeons recommended only 2 days for the average healthy non-dieting adult. This leaves it up to you as to what you want to do. I loaded for 3 days one of my rounds, but I have found 2 days to be sufficient for me. One way to figure it is see how much weight you gain loading the first 2 days- if it seems like enough, you’re probably good. If you haven’t gained much at all and don’t feel like you really packed those fats in there, a 3rd day may be warranted.

What Does This Really Mean??

None of this making sense? Don’t worry. It doesn’t really make sense to me either. I think I need some more science classes or something. But the point is, loading IS important, even if you don’t understand the entire concept behind it fully. Enough people have done this protocol now to see that it works as it’s been written. As Robin puts it, “Loading is a fundamental necessity for the entire protocol to work. Without loading, participants can experience symptoms of starvation for longer than two weeks.”

If you want to be one the first to experiment with hCG without loading and then get a body fat test afterwards to see what your ratio of body fat loss to muscle loss is, be my guest! Since I only have one body, I’ve decided to in this case to stick with what appears to work best.

I’ll just quote Dr. Simeon’s mention on this subject below: “During the two days of forced feeding from the first to the third injection – many patients are surprised that contrary to their previous experience they do not gain weight and some even lose. The explanation is that in these cases there is a compensatory flow of urine, which drains excessive water from the body. To some extent this seems to be a direct action of HCG, but it may also be due to a higher protein intake, as we know that a protein-deficient diet makes the body retain water.”

So the majority do gain weight loading or gorging in the 2 days before starting the VLCD on hCG, but some, including myself, have lost weight on at least 1 of the loading days. Typically for me I lose a little weight after the first loading day- like maybe .8 or 1 lb, then I gain 1-3 lbs the 2nd loading day, so my net loading gain is usually like 1.5-2lbs.

Dr. Simeons mentioned in his original protocol, laid out in Pounds and Inches, that if you were off hCG for less than 2 weeks, you could re-start the 500 calorie diet without reloading. If you are right at that 2 week mark, it may be that you might do something in between and do 1 loading day. Just an idea.

Types of Hcg- Prescription, Homeopathic (1)

Can you take a look at the ingredients on your bottle of hCG drops? There are basically three types of “hCG” out there now.

1. Prescription hCG – the real hormone
2. Homeopathic hCG – if it’s true homeopathic hCG it will contain something like “hCG – 10x, 30x, 60x, etc type numbers)
3. hCG Activator products – these do not contain any hCG at all, but contain amino acids. It’s claimed these these amino acids cause your body to make hCG. I do not know if I believe this at this point you guys. I like to keep an open mind.

When it comes down to it, my personal choice is that I really only feel comfortable using prescription hCG, the real hormone. One example given to me was the question, “would you feel comfortable taking homeopathic birth control?” Hmmm. Hormones are powerful! I do not think the hCG hormone is a placebo so, so the muscle sparing effects that hCG seems to create in the presence of such a low calorie diet is very important to me. However, I have to admit that I have seen some great results with homeopathic hCG as well, so I can’t knock it completely, and some choose to go this route and feel completely comfortable with it. I have not seen enough feedback from these hCG activator products (that don’t contain hCG) to feel comfortable recommending them at this time. The truth is, anyone will lose weight on a 500 calorie, regardless of taking any supplement or hormone.

The questions are:
1. how much of that weight loss is fat vs. muscle,
2. how is your hunger while ON the diet itself, and
3. how will the diet effect your metabolism during and after the diet (and thus ability to maintain)?

To me the hCG hormone is what kind of guarantees a positive answer to these questions, whereas I do not have proof of such with the other hCG type products at this time. The others MAY work, I just can’t be sure, and I feel best sticking with what I know can be relied on since I only have one body and no time for do-overs.

The current sources for real prescription hCG that I feel comfortable recommending, if you end up choosing to go that route, can be found here: http://hcgchica.com/buy-hcg-injections-worldwide/
And all my tutorials for injections are here to help you with mixing and injecting!: http://hcgchica.com/hcg-injections-tutorials/

Finding Recipes for the Hcg Diet (2)

Oh, so you’re not like me eh, one of those creatures of habit who always orders the same stinkin’ meal at a restaurant and eats the same exact smoothie everyday?

For those of who are so bored or sick of what you’re eating on hCG that it’s threatening your round, the most highly rated hCG cookbook out there, with over 200 recipes for you to play with and keep you sane, is Tammy Skye’s hCG Diet Gourmet Cookbook – there are 2 volumes actually! The first really does have over 200 recipes, and the 2nd volume has 150 recipes more!Anyway, you can purchase one of both of those cookbooks here:

How Much Weightloss on HCG? (2)

Generally females can expect to have a .5lb-.75 per day average of weightloss over the course of the length of their “round” (see acronyms for hcg diet for definition of a round). Does this mean that you will lose exactly .5 or .75 pounds per day, every day, while on the Hcg diet? Not quite. What this means is that some days you will lose 2 lbs, some days you will lose 1 lb, and some days you will lose nothing. You’ll have some .2’s and .4’s. But once you’ve completed your time on the Hcg diet, you’ll usually find that the total weightloss, averaged out, will equal somewhere between a half pound to three quarters of a pound per day. An example: If you lost 26 pounds in 40 days on the Hcg diet, that would be 26lbs/40days= .65, or a.65 pound per day average. Generally the more weight you need to lose, the higher your average will be at first. If you are 100 pounds overweight, you may very well actually reach the 1 lb/day average you’ve heard about your first time on the Hcg diet. As you shrink and are less overweight, your average will generally decrease. Example: I started Round 5 with probably only about 10-15lbs of excess fat, and my weightloss average for that round is .47lbs/day. My 1st round of Hcg when I was 60 pounds overweight, my weightloss average was .62/lbs per day.

Men are different than women (duh), and they lose weight very quickly on the hCG diet. That 1lb/day average that many people hear about? Yep- men often get that. My husband is the perfect example. He lost 23 lbs in 23 days. He went from 207 lbs to 184.

What Happens After the Hcg Diet Questions (1)

I don’t find this to be the case because since being on the proper dose of hCG does actually change your feeling of hunger, you are not actually feeling starved, as you would if you went days on end eating 500 calories without the hormone in your system.

But the caveat here is that this is IF you are on the right dose of hCG for you and IF you are not extending your round of hCG too long, and IF you are not experiencing other major health problems that are making you feel like utter crap on hCG (me my 2nd round). If you transition into Phase 3 feeling sane – you are usually good to go and can incorporate back into normal amounts of food and no binge issues no problem- this is what most experience. But if you have an issue 1 or more of the above 3 things I mentioned, then yes, there is potential for bingeing after concluding Phase 2. I know the feeling. The best thing I can think of to liken it to is like if you had been holding your breath for far too long, when you finally release your lungs to inhale air, it’s like this super fast gasp where a huge amount of air rushes in and you can’t stop it – that’s the feeling I’ve had before when I’ve felt super hungry and basically inhaled food. But like I said, if you go about this protocol in a wise manner, the way it was meant to be done, you will not have this issue.

Menopause and Hcg (1)

Yes. However, don’t let this discourage you because I would say that honestly a VERY sizable portion of those frequenting my blog are women in the menopause and peri-menopause age bracket, successfully losing weight and changing their lives. Even if losses are slower, in the grand scheme of things, remember a few extra weeks to get to your goal is not that big of a deal. It helps to adjust your mindset to expect slow (and hey if it’s faster, you’ll be extra happy).

Pre-existing Health Problems and the Hcg Diet (2)

It hasn’t been available online anymore for about a year but I heard it will soon be available again- when it is, it’s called Cynomel (with an n)- the mexican version, and it will eventually be found at mexican online pharmacies like mymexicandrugstore.org and https://www.mexmeds4you.com/ and meds.com.mx

The brand you want to get (once it’s available- it’s not currently but should be soon) is called Grossman – it’s manufactured in Mexico and has been a reliable quality brand of it that I used the last few years.

Other brands I’ve come across to replace it have had very mixed and negative reviews (for instance one brand called Triyotex doesn’t have very good feedback) when it comes to people questioning how much active ingredient there is etc. so I’d wait for Grossman.

The other thing you might check into though is Dessicated natural thyroid – it has a combo of naturally occurring t4 and t3- usually this is prescription only and you can’t get it online HOWEVER there is one brand that you can get online over the counter called Thyro-gold and it has very good reviews from those who’ve taken it, so you can look that up too.

Regarding purchasing Cytomel online- it’s usually available in either 25mcg tablets or 75 mcg. You never want to buy it in 75mcg. That is a LOT of Cytomel. I only take a total of 12.5 mcg a day (half of one 25mcg tablet) so if it were me, I’d always purchase in the 25mcg dosage. The highest daily dosage I ever took was 87.5mcg (under the care of a doctor) but even then the dosage was split up, so the 75mcg is almost never appropriate- it’s a capsule so you can reliably break the dose up, whereas the 25mcg tablet is scored and can be easily split in half and then I break it into quarters.

Remember the following is just non-professional opinion.

Personally a lot of the people who do the HCG protocol, including myself, do it BECAUSE we have hypothyroidism. It’s the only protocol that has actually worked for weight loss for many women when other diets didn’t work. HCG as a non-placebo hormone seems to actually protect the metabolism and I’ve seen it really does preserve lean muscle while losing weight and this means that a person can lose weight and be able to adapt back to life after eight loss more easily with less likelihood of regaining the weight.

Now it’s not a replacement for making sure to have proper thyroid meds- I take some myself- and there’s a lot of good info on this site about getting PROPER thyroid meds, which many regular MD’s do NOT prescribe so you might want to check it out: stopthethyroidmadness.com – this seems to be really important for maintaining weight loss long term.

I personally would never stop my thyroid meds. HCG doesn’t fix the thyroid or anything. You will actually lose weight better/at normal rate if you make sure your metabolism is helped by your meds while on HCG. Some lose slower if they are hypothyroid and don’t have proper thyroid medication but they often still lose and do well.

The juice of one lemon daily is allowed for all purposes. Salt, pepper, vinegar, mustard powder, garlic, sweet basil, parsley, thyme, majoram, etc., may be used for seasoning, but no oil, butter or dressing.

Basic Rules: Calories are not to exceed 500 calories.

Please see “how to portion out your calories on the hCG diet” in this same section. The makeup of the 500 calories is extremely important.

Not to exceed 500 calories.
Dr. Simeons said it was allowable to spread your meal throughout the day if you like, for instance, to have your lunch fruit for breakfast instead. However, you would never have 2 fruits or 2 proteins in one sitting.
Tea, Coffee, and Water with sugar free sweeteners in any quantity is fine. I highly recommend using stevia as your sugar free sweetener as it is one of the more “natural” ones to choose from, although in the end I guess they are all processed in one way or another!

In short, NO you don’t have to the full 500, and YES it’s okay to eat less- depending on a few factors.

Explanation as follows:
-In the original protocol that Dr. Simeons wrote in Pounds and Inches, he stated that the diet was not to exceed 500 calories.
-He then stated that aside from the 2 protein portions, anything else a patient didn’t feel like eating may be omitted.
-If you do what Robin Woodall in her book Weight-Loss Apocalypse: Emotional Eating Rehab Through the HCG Protocol suggests, you should try to use your time on the protocol to eat to hunger, which in simple terms means basically to eat only when you are actually hungry and stop when you are satisfied. This means on hCG you may you find yourself at times eating less than 500 calories. On some days your hunger is so nonexistent that you only need 300-350 calories* to satisfy your hunger on a given day.

*Remember though that you must always eat your 2 proteins at the very least.Additionally, be truthful with yourself- you would never want to eat less than 500 calories just to get ahead or lose more weight if you are indeed feeling hungry or weak on less than the 500.

I will quote what Dr. Simeons said in his book pounds and inches here: “Those not uncommon patients who feel that even so little food is too much for them, can omit anything they wish.”
So in short, no.

However- do keep in mind, do not get carried away with this- you should eat to hunger which means if you are truly not hungry for 500 calories in a day while on hCG, and you end up eating say 300-400 calories instead some days, so be it. However, if you are technically hungry but purposefully trying to eat less than the 500 calories in an effort to lose more weight, this is not a proper way to view things (as I’m sure you’ll agree). Sometimes we can find excuses for ourselves to try to get quicker results in the short-term but we need to remember that it’s long term health that we should be concerned with.

Myself? The amount of calories I eat varies. I don’t actually weigh/count anything but the protein as Dr. Simeons instructed, however, just to get an idea, some days I’ll plug in basic amounts of what I ate into myfitnesspal just to check. What I find is that many days on the hCG protocol I’m so not hungry, especially at the beginning, that I only find myself eating 300-400 calories in a day. Other days I find myself needing not only the full 500 but sometimes even close to 600 calories, so that’s what I eat.

My hydrostatic body fat testing has shown that eating under the 500 calories when my hunger dictates has not been a problem for me- meaning I did not lose excessive amounts of muscle doing this, and I’ve kept off my fat loss from hCG very comfortably since then as well.

So if you let hunger be your guide, as Robin Woodall so wonderfully explained in her book Weightloss Apocalypse, you will get the best weight loss in the healthiest way out of the hCG Diet protocol.

Oh, so you’re not like me eh, one of those creatures of habit who always orders the same stinkin’ meal at a restaurant and eats the same exact smoothie everyday?

For those of who are so bored or sick of what you’re eating on hCG that it’s threatening your round, the most highly rated hCG cookbook out there, with over 200 recipes for you to play with and keep you sane, is Tammy Skye’s hCG Diet Gourmet Cookbook – there are 2 volumes actually! The first really does have over 200 recipes, and the 2nd volume has 150 recipes more!Anyway, you can purchase one of both of those cookbooks here:

Technically, the other cancer causing ones are allowed as well, you know the aspartame and nutrasweet stuff. Whether or not you utilize that is up to you. What’s hard about all this is who knows, we may find that stevia causes cancer in a few years too you know? And there also has to be the consideration of what I like to call sanity saving. If having a very small amount of something is going to save your sanity, and allow you to get over a hump that will aid you to your 50 lb weight loss, even if it’s not the best thing in the world, I might just choose to do that right? So yes, I had a few diet cokes on hCG. I wouldn’t make it a daily thing, but when desperate, a diet coke over an entire Pizza binge on Phase 2 – well you make the choice. When it comes to the sugar alcohols, I think you have to be more careful as it seems that these can more likely interact with your blood sugar and effect your weight loss. When in doubt leave it out (unless desperate) and track what you do so that you can adjust when needed.

I didn’t eat any food for breakfast on Phase 2 myself – to this day actually I have no need for breakfast myself, going on like 4 years now, but for those who need it, some have eaten a half portion of protein even, say 50 grams of chicken, or added in a 3rd protein serving that they eat for breakfast. For those with blood sugar issues however, it may actually be very important for you to eat something for breakfast, and to eat something with a little sugar and carbs- meaning, your fruit.

Yes I have. I did this my first and 2nd round. I chose after that to no longer use coconut oil during Phase 2, so that wiped out my access to chocolate delight. I do have a pinterest board with hCG chocolate delight recipes. But you also might want to give my post on things to consider when thinking about Coconut Oil and hCG as well.

Injections and Hcg (9)

While on the hCG Diet, you will take your hCG injections daily, once per day, usually in the morning. You will take the injections both while loading for 2 days and then daily while on the very low calorie portion of the diet.

Guess what? It doesn’t hurt- I PROMISE! This is coming from a person who was just as nervous and just as unwilling to do injections as you are right now.

After doing 5 rounds of hCG Injections myself now, let me tell you my beginning story of wimpiness. I had no intention of doing injections. Way too nervous about that idea. I was going to do the sublingual hCG method (aka rx hCG Drops). But there were 2 things that made me reconsider. First of all, I’m cheap. When using RX hCG Drops you have to use twice as much hCG as for injections, thus costing twice as much. Secondly and most important, I really wanted to make sure that I got the exact amount of hCG that I was supposed to get into my bloodstream. The only way to be completely positive of this and have 100% absorption was to use injections. With drops, there is lot that doesn’t get absorbed under the tongue but gets swallowed instead, how much is absorbed is affected by how long you hold it under your tongue and how long you waited to eat and drink both before and after taking the hCG Drops (which is why you have to take twice as much hCG because of how much doesn’t get absorbed)- it was just too many variables for me to feel comfortable with since I knew that the hCG was not a placebo and wanted to get the best results possible.

SO- for those of you who really don’t want to do injections, yet in the back of your mind you’re reading the answer to this question because you feel like maybe you should try the injections anyway, TRY IT! See what’s next…..

True story: I made my husband do my first 3 days of injections on Round 1. That’s how nervous and how much I didn’t want to do them. I couldn’t work up the nerve to do them myself. I didn’t even look like while he did the injection on me. I closed my eyes, looked away, and kept asking “have you done it yet? have you done it yet?” I kept waiting for that moment of pain that all my nervousness was about. When he said yes, he’d already stuck the needle in, I said, “really????” I hadn’t felt a thing. Really- not a thing.

What Does an hCG Injection feel like?

Okay, so in all reality, there will be times when you feel a slight sensation when you do your injection- many times the hCG injections don’t hurt at all and I don’t feel anything. Sometimes it feels a little like if you take a mechanical pencil tip and push it against your thigh a little bit- you can’t honestly say it hurts but you do feel something.

The ONLY time it has hurt significantly was when I had already lost a lot of fat and was trying to inject into an are that no longer had very much fat and that I had already injected into many many times. Maybe scar tissue, maybe not enough fat, maybe both, I don’t know. I just stopped that and found a fattier place to inject and all was well again.

As long as you keep finding nice fatty areas to inject into (stomach, belly, inner and outer thighs, etc) it will not be uncomfortable. It’s a mental thing more than anything else, because it really doesn’t hurt. You’ll be an old pro in no time.

What Does an hCG Injection feel like?

For the most part, you really don’t feel much of anything- it really doesn’t hurt and many times I literally feel nothing.

In all reality though, there will be times when you feel a slight sensation when you do your injection- many times the hCG injections don’t hurt at all and I don’t feel anything. Sometimes it feels a little like if you take a mechanical pencil tip and push it against your thigh a little bit- you can’t honestly say it hurts but you do feel something. Still, it’s not any kind of sensation to be afraid of as it doesn’t actually hurt.

The ONLY time that an hCG Injection has hurt significantly for me was when I had already lost a lot of fat and was trying to inject into an area that no longer had very much fat and that I had already injected into many many times. Maybe scar tissue, maybe not enough fat, maybe both, I don’t know. I just stopped that and found a fattier place to inject and all was well again.

As long as you keep finding nice fatty areas to inject into (stomach, belly, inner and outer thighs, etc) it will not be uncomfortable. It’s a mental thing more than anything else, because it really doesn’t hurt. You’ll be an old pro in no time.

Yes, you can, but please read my thoughts on why you may not want to do this.

Why it may be a good idea NOT to pre-load needles with hCG:

Keeping your hCG in the vial until you need it each day allows you to change your dose as hCG when needed.

The main reason it may be a good idea to keep your hCG mixture in the vial and take out your hCG on a daily basis from it is in case you need to change your dose mid-round. This happens all the time- in fact, if you are a person who happens to start miraculously on the exact perfect dose of hCG for you, and not need to change the dosage at some point during the round, well you are rare my friend.

By dosing your hCG daily as needed instead of pre-loading your needles, you will be able to adjust your dose as necessary. At the start of each hCG round, sometimes there is a dosage change that needs to be made almost right away as you may find the dose you’re on to be too high or too low to create that non-hunger state that is very important. Additionally, once you find a dose that feels really good and makes you not hungry, you may still find a few weeks in to the diet as you’ve lost weight that you need to reduce or adjust your dose once again- many as they get smaller have found that they’ve needed to gradually reduce their dose of hCG to get the same no-hunger feeling.

If you pre-load your needles, you will not be able to change your dose unless you put your injection needle back into the hCG vial and this will dull the needle further making your injection painful. Also it’s just a lot of trouble to do this.

If you do decide you want to pre-load your needles anyway, this is how you can do it:

– Draw up enough hCG for the given dose into each injection syringe, being careful to make sure that the entire chosen area of the syringe is full of the hCG liquid and there are no gaping holes or pockets of air. Do no let the needles touch anything else except where you stick it into the hCG vial and immediately…

– Put the injection caps back on each needle.

– Store the needles in a paper bag or something else that will prevent light from reaching them.

It’s important when using hCG injections to inject in a place with lots of fat. You want to inject the hCG into your fat. If it goes in your muscle that’s okay too, but most likely the needles you’ll get in your hCG kit will be fairly short and just the right length to reach your fat.

The usual places that hCGer’s seem to use and that I’ve used for my own hCG injections are in the belly area, on either side of the belly button at least an inch away, the inner and outer thighs, buttocks (if you can reach!) and I’ve also injected into my fattier tricep area.

For all but one of my long rounds of hCG, I skipped a shot once a week as the original protocol tells you to do. Usually I just started skipping it about 1 week into starting the vlcd. I find in general that the one day with no injection really doesn’t feel any different than the days with injections (usually it’s only if you were to skip a 2nd day that you would start to get hungry etc.) Many people load on the weekend, so this means their skip day might end up being on a tuesday or wednesday. But any day really is fine.

The main thing is I feel that it’s nice to get a whole week of vlcd’s in before doing the first skip day, in my opinion.

You can either get a sharps container, or I believe others will put them in an empty plastic gallon milk jug and toss it that way. I believe the legality of all this varies from state to state so you might want to look that up for your state.

Yes there are a few ways this can happen. One is that hCG is very unstable in liquid form. That’s the reason it’s put into powder form before you get it in your vial (called Lypholization – watch the pharmacist explain this process to us here!) Once the hCG is mixed up by you, the guesstimate is that it stays usable (as long as you keep it in the fridge at all times except when you use it to get your injection) for about 4 weeks or so. Usually after 4 weeks, it’s always a good idea to re-mix your hCG, even if you have some left. You can often start to tell that it’s losing potency because you’ll get hungrier and having issues with weight loss. I have re-mixed my hCG at 3 weeks many times just to be safe.

So basically in a nutshell it has been found that hCG absorbs into your system better through subcutaneous actually vs. intramuscular- see this study regarding this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12749424

Aside from that there is the circumstantial type stuff where people get the same results – ie both hunger- which is the main way you know you’ve absorbed it properly, as well as weight loss – I’ve even seen people do both- 1 round with sub q and one round with intramuscular and they did not lose more weight with IM.

For instance, I took 125iu’s subcutaneously, the same dosage Dr. S gave his patient’s IM and had no hunger at all – so obviously I absorbed it still.

It’s nice to know this actually because the shorter needles are nice!
Either way of course people can do what they feel is best, but the vast majority of people using the hCG protocol now do it sub q and the research seems to show it works well this way.

Exercise and HCG (2)

I get this question a lot, and I’m just going to be perfectly honest- I have used 5 different brands of hCG myself in my 5 rounds of hCG, and guess what? They all worked perfectly fine. So I really don’t have a preference. I promise, I really don’t. Just make sure you purchase the real thing, RX hCG- that’s all that really matters. The 4 sources that I recommend I can vouch for as being real, high quality prescription hCG.

When including exercise during Phase 2 of the hCG protocol, I would probably tend to suggest more that you keep your veggies in, and include additional calories in the form of protein as well to compensate and support your body doing that “extra” stuff.

Side Effects of Hcg (1)

Hawthorne berry (not vouching for this brand, just found it in a quick amazon search) and Magnesium as well as Potassium were mentioned by viewers as things to try for leg cramps. Side note the magnesium I linked to is what I take every single night in daily life- not only helps with muscle ache but keeps you regular as well. ;0 I take 2 of those large horse pills every night. The viewer that mentioned Hawthorne berry said that it “increases blood flow to the limbs.” Thanks for that!

How and Where Can I Get My Body Fat Percent Tested? Why Should I? (1)

The only reliable way to track body fat percent and how much actual fat you lose is through 3 forms of actual testing (no app, scale, or monitor can do this for you accurately):
1. Hydrostatic body fat testing
2. DEXA scan
3. Bod Pod

You might search these three choices in google and your location to see if you can find something near to you. All my body fat percent stats that I discuss on my blog are from hydrostatic body fat testing. This type of proof can’t be argued. I have posted my actual tests results in several places on my blog, in case you care to share it with them.

For instance, this post shows the bodyfat percent I started with, what I got down to with hCG and how Crossfit played into it:
http://hcgchica.com/maintaining-hcg-diet-weight-loss-hcgchica-update-2nd-quarter-2014/

In a nutshell, a very large percentage of my weight loss was indeed fat, as proven by multiple hydrostatic body fat tests. I started the hCG diet with 59 lbs of fat on my body. Being 5’1″ that is a LOT. Today I have 21 lbs of fat on my body, even 2 years later after finishing the hCG protocol. That’s almost 40 lbs of actual fat, proven by hydrostatic testing that I not only lost, but that I continue to keep off. This fat loss was achieved solely with prescription hCG injections.

Now, just to be clear, I CAN NOT speak for the amount of fat loss achieved with anything but the injections. I have never used prescription drops, homeopathic drops, or hCG “activator”. Whether these work equally well I just don’t know. The one thing I can be sure of though is the injections, which is why I continue to feel most comfortable recommending this method.

This is a GOOD question, but a little less easy to answer than for prescription hCG. I have only used prescription hCG myself. After all the hoopla by the FDA regarding homeopathic hCG, as far as I know, may of the former sellers of true homeopathic hCG are no longer allowed to sell them as such. There appears to be a number of scam hCG products out there still being sold as homeopathic hCG when in fact, it’s not homeopathic hCG. I would suggest being VERY careful with your source for homeopathic hCG. People want to keep making money so they are trying to find ways to sell their products even though they are no longer an hCG product- many of them claim they are as effective or more effective than hCG. Really? So you’re telling me that, somehow, just after the FDA banned you from selling your hCG product, you somehow miraculously discovered another totally unrelated product that works just as well or better than something that took a Dr. back in the 1950’s many years to discover and fine tune it’s effectiveness? Ummm, no.

I am very concerned about those who lose weight on supposed homeopathic hCG products when it’s unclear what the composition of that weight is- how much of that weight is muscle? How much is fat? I have not been able to find statistics on this yet. I am sure of what prescription hCG does because of my very own hydrostatic body fat tests and DEXA scans, showing me in real life what my fat losses were. That is why I don’t feel too comfortable recommending a homeopathic hCG product at this time. However, I am not saying that I don’t think true homeopathic hCG works. I have seen some awesome women lose a lot of weight using homeopathic hCG and keep it off, so asking them where they got there’s might be a good place to start. Here’s my favorite homeopathic hCG youtuber: Hhcgcrazy

Can you take a look at the ingredients on your bottle of hCG drops? There are basically three types of “hCG” out there now.

1. Prescription hCG – the real hormone
2. Homeopathic hCG – if it’s true homeopathic hCG it will contain something like “hCG – 10x, 30x, 60x, etc type numbers)
3. hCG Activator products – these do not contain any hCG at all, but contain amino acids. It’s claimed these these amino acids cause your body to make hCG. I do not know if I believe this at this point you guys. I like to keep an open mind.

When it comes down to it, my personal choice is that I really only feel comfortable using prescription hCG, the real hormone. One example given to me was the question, “would you feel comfortable taking homeopathic birth control?” Hmmm. Hormones are powerful! I do not think the hCG hormone is a placebo so, so the muscle sparing effects that hCG seems to create in the presence of such a low calorie diet is very important to me. However, I have to admit that I have seen some great results with homeopathic hCG as well, so I can’t knock it completely, and some choose to go this route and feel completely comfortable with it. I have not seen enough feedback from these hCG activator products (that don’t contain hCG) to feel comfortable recommending them at this time. The truth is, anyone will lose weight on a 500 calorie, regardless of taking any supplement or hormone.

The questions are:
1. how much of that weight loss is fat vs. muscle,
2. how is your hunger while ON the diet itself, and
3. how will the diet effect your metabolism during and after the diet (and thus ability to maintain)?

To me the hCG hormone is what kind of guarantees a positive answer to these questions, whereas I do not have proof of such with the other hCG type products at this time. The others MAY work, I just can’t be sure, and I feel best sticking with what I know can be relied on since I only have one body and no time for do-overs.

The current sources for real prescription hCG that I feel comfortable recommending, if you end up choosing to go that route, can be found here: http://hcgchica.com/buy-hcg-injections-worldwide/
And all my tutorials for injections are here to help you with mixing and injecting!: http://hcgchica.com/hcg-injections-tutorials/

First of all, hCG CAN and does test positive on pregnancy tests. So what I am about to say below applies ONLY to the current recommended sources for real prescription hCG on my blog. If you are having trouble getting hCG to test positive on a pregnancy test from any other source, I cannot vouch for those companies because I have not investigated them. One thing you should know however is that you cannot buy real hCG – the actual hormone – over the counter- so if you purchase something at GNA or Walmart, etc., you are not purchasing the real hormone. If that is what you intended, great. But I just wanted to clarify that for anyone who wasn’t sure.

This is significant because there are plenty of bottles of hCG out there that aren’t the real hormone, and if the real hormone is what you desired, well then it’s nice to have a way to prove this. So again, the following I’m about to discuss only applies to the 4 companies currently on my blog that I’ve personally interacted with and know to be true hCG.

To give you another quick example of how hCG is quite frequently improperly tested, check out this facebook comment:

“I found a pregnancy test and decided to test mine. It was the pee on kind. Knowing a days worth of injection wouldn’t be enough I broke it open. I put the injection on the tablet and put it back together. Nothing changed. So I put the end under the faucet and put water on it to move everything forward and the lines lit up. So mine is positive.”

If she had stopped at her first efforts, she would have thought her hCG was negative. This happens all the time you guys. It’s easier these days to just make sure to purchase hCG from a qualified source since the pregnancy testing is really just proving to be unreliable.

The sources that are on my blog are real prescription hCG, I have made sure of this- I do not recommend any company on my buy hCG page without fully communicating with them first. This is extremely important to me because I do not believe hCG is a placebo, and I would only use the real thing on myself, so I have made sure these sources are real. The sources in the U.S. – Nu Image, US hCG, and Advance hCG, all use the same compounding pharmacies that any weight loss clinic uses to make and dispense the prescription hCG.

To feel completely secure, 2 of the sources on my site I have actually met with in person and visited some of the pharmacies they use where the actual hCG is produced now (because I really do care about you guys and that you see the proof too!) You can see highlights of on of my trips below. The pharmacies I visited in person were for Nu Image and US hCG Shots.

This can be tough. While there are many people we do not need to tell about what we’re doing, it’s nice to be able to include family in what we’re doing, one cuz they’re family, two, because they can be a source of support (sometimes), and three, it’s rather hard to hide something like that from the people you eat with every day.

So what do you do in a situation like this where someone close to you is really against the idea?

I don’t know if this will help, but perhaps showing the logic behind it – even perhaps written out, could help. I have gone to great lengths now to try to prove that this protocol is NOT a starvation diet and is not stripping every last bit of muscle off your body.

A few sources from my blog that demonstrate some proof that skeptical family members might find useful:

My bodyfat testing:

Before hCG, After finishing hCG, and 2 years after finishing hCG. It’s clear from these hydrostatic body fat tests, which is a very clear, accurate, reliable way to test body fat that body builders and other fitness enthusiasts use to track their progress, that not only was the majority of my weight loss fat, I have a healthy amount of muscle mass for my height (5’1″) and this combined with the fact that I have maintained this for what was at that time, 2 years, shows that my metabolism wasn’t not hampered negatively.

The argument for hormones. hCG is a hormone. Just like the hormones in birth control are powerful enough to prevent conception, hCG is not a placebo.

I realize that sometimes if a person is not in the mood to believe something, it doesn’t matter how logical you are, they’re just going to think what they want to think. But perhaps for some, this type of proof might be convincing.

There are probably various reasons that people don’t like the idea of this protocol. Some have something against accomplishing something faster than the traditional way. But if the weight being lost is indeed fat, and ability to maintain is there shown by others, why would accomplishing something in a more efficient manner be a bad thing? Washing machine? Why yes! I’d love one. Don’t got time for the clothesline in twenty-fifteen. Times have changed and our lives are hectic, busy and stressful. It makes sense to be efficient where we can, so that we can use our time for other things that can’t be rushed- like family time! ?

1.After TOM: For women in particular, it’s ideal to start the hCG Diet immediately following what we in the hCG community on youtube call “TOM” (time of the month). This is not a rule, but in general, it is wise to plan your round in this manner if at all possible. This is because cravings and hunger tend to increase around this time which can make the diet a little more difficult for a couple days, and it’s better to get a good portion of the diet under your belt and have lost a significant amount of weight before dealing with the mental and emotional roller coaster that TOM can sometimes put us ladies through. The hCG Diet is certainly strict, and you will find it easier to deal with difficulties on the diet later after you’ve done well for awhile and seen yourself lose a lot of weight. If you were to deal with TOM only a few days into the protocol, you may find yourself wavering or wanting to give up.

2. After/In Between Large Social Events: As I mentioned above, the hCG Diet is not easy folks. You will lose weight oh so quickly, certainly. But it is very strict in every sense of the word, so in order to place yourself in the best situation to complete the diet successfully without being too tempted to cheat or give up, it’s ideal to clear the social calendar while on the diet. If you a number of big parties to go to, party on at them all, then start the hCG Diet when things have settled down. Perhaps you could do your loading at the last party. 😉

Obviously, you don’t have to do either of these things, they are merely suggestions that may make your time on the diet more manageable, especially if it’s your first time and you’re not a seasoned “hCGer” yet.

Actually it’s a common mistake, but you only want to weigh yourself in the morning. If you simply drink a 16 oz. glass of water, you will weigh a pound more on the scale immediately. So with food and drink throughout the day and fluctuating fluid levels you will always weight several more lbs on the scale later in the day than in the morning.

So just weigh in the mornings only and stay off that scale otherwise so it doesn’t mess with your head!

I don’t feel that there is enough information to be dogmatic about this topic, so I will share just a few key points to think about to help you make your own personal decision regarding this. We’ll discuss why hCG Injections are the best form to use for the hCG Diet, the case against rx hCG Drops, but why I personally do not dismiss rx hCG Drops entirely despite this.

The final deciding factor for me is:

How sure do you want to be?

I figure I only have one body (count it, 1, uno), so I’m going to do what I can be positive of will produce the results I desire. I don’t have another body, nor the time, mental or emotional strength to risk screwing it up and re-doing it (not that I’ve never screwed up on hCG, but you know what I mean!)

hCG Injections- Why I feel they are a superior form of hCG Delivery

The nice thing about hCG injections and the reason I personally stick with them is:

You can be 100% sure that you getting the exact therapeutic dose of hCG that you are supposed to get- there is no room for lost hCG due to not holding it under your tongue long enough or swallowing too much of it where it’s simply destroyed by stomach acids. I want to be SURE.

You don’t have to be concerned about the size of the hCG particles, etc. because you are injecting the hormone, therefore it WILL be in your bloodstream, in the proper amount, doing what it’s supposed to do with no questions. Even those who claim hCG doesn’t work won’t deny that hCG IS a hormone and that you can inject it and then see measurable hCG hormone levels in the blood. I want to be SURE.

All the hydrostatic and DEXA scan body fat testing that has been done on hCG dieters (that I’ve seen anyway) that shows a higher percentage of fat loss has been on those using hCG injections. I want to be SURE.

The Case Against Rx Drops/Sublingual hCG

Some of the articles online have stated that the hCG particles themselve are too large to be taken sublingually- that the hCG cannot be absorbed by the oral mucosa, thus is not a reliable method of hCG delivery. This could mean you may find yourself doing the hCG diet without any real hCG present in your system, which obviously is something you wouldn’t want, since hCG really isn’t a placebo.

Articles worth reading related to this are here:

http://deepdownwellness.com/ddw/?p=354 In his article, one important thing he states is that, “There are no published reports that have been able to demonstrate a measurable amount of HCG in a person’s blood when given in either oral or sublingual forms.

Www.hcgobesity.org contains information regarding a double blind study that D. Belluscio did using oral hCG. He actually claims based on the results that the oral hCG was effective, however, it was also noted that, “on treatment days 0, 15 and 30 we have tested all volunteers, screening for the presence of plasmatic b-hCG. Concentrations were undetectable in all cases (data not shown).” So basically, no hCG was actually detected in the subject’s bloodstream while taking sublingual hCG. So no hCG was found in the subjects, therefore, the patients didn’t absorb any of the hCG right?

For those who do believe in the use and effectiveness of oral hCG, it IS definitely known with surety that not nearly as much hCG is absorbed by the body (if at all) by this method, thus the reason that you must take 2-3x’s as much hCG in the sublingual form than in the injection form. For instance, I inject 125ius of hCG by injection and feel no hunger. An oral hCG rx drops user must place 332iu’s of hCG per day total in order to experience the same hunger free state. That’s 2.5x’s as much hCG being needed.

Why I Still Can’t Dismiss Oral hCG Completely

Because I’ve seen it work in real people! I may not have all the scientific proof to back up a statement that, “yes, oral hCG works”, and maybe there is “proof” that “oral hCG cannot be absorbed.” But you know what? I have also seen supposed “proof” that hCG doesn’t work at all for weightloss. And yet I have my own concrete proof that hCG does work for weightloss, and there is no medical document, study, or person with Phd or Md at the end his/her name who could ever convince me otherwise- because I have experienced and proved through reliable testing that I have lost a huge amount of fat through the use of the hCG hormone- almost 40lbs worth now in fact. Of FAT. 40 lbs of FAT. Moving on…..

Why you can’t always trust supposed “proof”

It can be difficult to read through all the material online claiming A and B is proof of X and Y. Why? Because there are so many factors that go into making a piece of information true proof, and there may easily be things that were glossed over, or not mentioned, or not considered, etc.

So yes I’ve read the hCG particle are too large to absorb- but what do I then do with the many people I’ve actually SEEN lose weight well while using oral hCG, feel not hungry, keep the weight off, and they look fantastic (ie. it’s obvious they didn’t starve away mostly muscle by seeing how well balanced the form of their body looks). Our eyes often can tell us the truth about a matter, whereas the written word can be twisted by others to deceive us to meet someone else’s ends.

Real results/real people has merit

In the end I find myself most often taking real-world real-people results over supposed “medical facts.”

This is not to say that I don’t believe in proof. Certainly not- but it has to be REAL proof. For instance, when I have my body fat tested hydrostatically before and after doing the hCG diet, and it shows that I lost 80% fat, to me that is true proof of something. Would I have lost that much fat had I not been using the hCG hormone? I’m almost 100% sure not. But then again, I’ve never tried to live on 500 calories without hCG and then had my body fat tested either. I suppose that would be the ultimate proof.

100% Sure = hCGChica Uses Only hCG Injections

All this said, I personally choose to stick with hCG Injections. Why? Because I want to be sure of my results. Like I said in the beginning, I only have 1 body folks! I don’t want to mess with chances that are too high. It is known that hCG is definitely not absorbed as well orally and that is why double the amount, sometimes triple the amount of hCG has to be taken when used in sublingual form because IF the hCG gets absorbed, it’s only a small fraction. Everyone in the hCG community acknowledges this. I don’t like to put that much to chance when my body, my health, and my resulting capabilities in life are on the line.

I was afraid of injections when I first considered doing the hCG diet plan too. I had no intention of doing them. But guess what? It turns out they didn’t hurt at all! I promise. It’s more of a mental thing than anything else.

For those who just can’t get past the injection issue, you are a free agent- you should be able to do whatever you want on this topic without judgment.

Weight loss is definitely always from the calorie restriction. The shots are doing 2 very important things however – protecting muscle (preventing muscle loss and also thus down regulation of metabolism), and changing the feeling of hunger- very important for being on such a low calorie diet.

These two things make it so that I would not eat a low calorie diet to lose weight without the hormone, as a lot more of that “weight loss” would come from muscle.

No it is not. The hCG diet protocol is not meant for long term use. It is designed to be used for short periods of time, usually a period of just 3 to 6 weeks, to lose a substantial amount of fat in a short period of time, whereafter individuals get off the hCG hormone and resume eating a normal caloric intake for their size.

The original protocol that Dr. Simeons wrote using the hCG hormone had his patients do what we online like to call “rounds” of hCG- that lasted either for 23 injections or 40 injections (2 of the injections would be used while loading, so this would mean that actual days on the VLCD, losing weight, would be 21 days or 38 days). As you can see this is approximately 3 or 6 weeks.

These days, the majority of people seem to do varying numbers of days on the hCG diet, and in general, this doesn’t seem to harm anything. I have done rounds lasting 42 days, 38 days, 41 days, and 21 days. As far as I can tell so far, I have not seen adding or taking away days on the protocol to hurt stabilization of weightloss later.

Can you go longer than the recommended maximum number of 4o injections?

I have seen quite a few stay on the hCG Diet for more like 50-60 days without ill effect. Still, it would be advisable to be cautious and listen to your body. If you are feeling great on day 40 and feel like you could easily go one more week, it may be just fine and you’ll get that much more accomplished out of that round of hCG. But if you are feeling very tired and weak on day 40, this may be a good signal that it’s time to stop and give your body a rest. Losing so much fat in such a short period of time isn’t easy after all you know! Our bodies are all in different states of health when we begin the hCG protocol, and we want to respect our body and how it’s feeling. Just because someone else has done it doesn’t mean it’s the right decision for our body. Base it on how you feel your health is doing, not the tempting special numerical weight you have in your head that you see as the “magic number” you want to get to. Be smart about it and you will get to your magic number soon enough.

If you are doing hCG injections, you will inject just once daily, usually in the morning after you get up.

If you are taking hCG drops (aka sublingual hCG) you will be taking your hCG drops twice daily, once in the morning and once in the later afternoon/evening.

If you are taking homeopathic hCG, you will be following the directions of whatever company you bought your homeopathic hCG from- in most cases it appears that you will take homeopathic drops or pellets 3-4x’s times daily.

I will quote what Dr. Simeons said in his book pounds and inches here: “Those not uncommon patients who feel that even so little food is too much for them, can omit anything they wish.”
So in short, no.

However- do keep in mind, do not get carried away with this- you should eat to hunger which means if you are truly not hungry for 500 calories in a day while on hCG, and you end up eating say 300-400 calories instead some days, so be it. However, if you are technically hungry but purposefully trying to eat less than the 500 calories in an effort to lose more weight, this is not a proper way to view things (as I’m sure you’ll agree). Sometimes we can find excuses for ourselves to try to get quicker results in the short-term but we need to remember that it’s long term health that we should be concerned with.

Myself? The amount of calories I eat varies. I don’t actually weigh/count anything but the protein as Dr. Simeons instructed, however, just to get an idea, some days I’ll plug in basic amounts of what I ate into myfitnesspal just to check. What I find is that many days on the hCG protocol I’m so not hungry, especially at the beginning, that I only find myself eating 300-400 calories in a day. Other days I find myself needing not only the full 500 but sometimes even close to 600 calories, so that’s what I eat.

My hydrostatic body fat testing has shown that eating under the 500 calories when my hunger dictates has not been a problem for me- meaning I did not lose excessive amounts of muscle doing this, and I’ve kept off my fat loss from hCG very comfortably since then as well.

So if you let hunger be your guide, as Robin Woodall so wonderfully explained in her book Weightloss Apocalypse, you will get the best weight loss in the healthiest way out of the hCG Diet protocol.

After every round of hCG where you finish Phase 2 (the losing weight part), you always do 3 weeks of Phase 3- during this period you are eating a more normal amount of calories (don’t ask me how many- there isn’t an exact number- it’s more about eating to hunger) just no starches and sugars.

The original protocol that Dr. Simeons wrote in Pounds and Inches regarding the timing of the breaks was as follows:

6 week break between Round 1 and 2

8 week break between Round 2 and 3

10 week break between Round 3 and 4

etc…..just keeping adding 2 more weeks. So you see the breaks becoming successively longer with each round.

Does everyone do this? No. There may be good reason to do some rounds closer together, but more often than not, I find that those who take the proper breaks are the ones who succeed in the long term.

There are a couple reasons for this. One, fast weightloss can be a bit of a strain on the body- the breaks allow your body to re-group and stay balanced. Additionally, the hCG protocol is not just about weightloss. It’s about learning how to eat so you can maintain that weightloss. Phase 3 and the breaks between your rounds of hCG are really part of getting new patterns ingrained in your lifestyle.

In short, I would not personally use it on my own body. hCG is a hormone, so non-hormone hCG is simply not hCG.

The two things I believe in 100%- real prescription RX hCG, and REAL homeopathic hCG. I have used only hCG Injections myself and it’s probably what I’ll stick with forever and always, but true homeopathic hCG, from my observation has accomplished the same results as far as fat loss and ability to maintain the weightloss as well. I don’t think that homeopathic is necessarily for everyone, but for some who are very sensitive to the energy of things around them, I think it’s excellent. But beware- there are many fake homeopathic hCG preparations out there. One of the only ones I currently feel comfortable recommending is hcgbottle.com. The hCG Injections I have used has been from the 2 companies I compare on my buy hCG page.

That brings us back to complete and utter non-hormone hCG– which unfortunately is not hCG at all- as far as I know these are preparations have ingredients like the following: L- Ornithine L-Carnitine, L-Arginine, L-Glutamine, Maca,Niacin, Pygeum,Africanum, Beta-Alinine, Rhodiola, Astragalus. The first few are just amino acids- many of which body builders take while working out etc. to help with muscle recovery, muscle enlargement, etc. And I don’t actually know much about the latter ingredients- some are good for the adrenal glands, etc. etc.- but all in all the end result is that you will not have any hCG in your body going on at all.

You have the right to do whatever you choose to do, and I respect whatever decision you make- but the way that I look at it is, I only have one body. For me, it’s not worth the risk of both harming my body and hormone balance AND not getting the long lasting results I could have gotten- I don’t have time or energy to waste. I have done enough research on real hCG to know that it really works, and now of course have experienced the life change it brought me. But the non-hormone hCG is basically just like taking some herbal supplements- unfortunately it is not going to have the same effect of real hCG at all. I’m sorry if I burst anyone’s happy bubble. 🙁

Sometimes the reason people consider trying something like non-hormone hCG, or a cheap “homeopathic” hCG that is not really homeopathic hCG is because of cost. And I understand that some of us are really strapped for cash in this economy- but it would be better to wait and save a little and do real hCG in a couple months, than to buy something cheap and ineffective and start now– does that sound reasonable?

Can you take a look at the ingredients on your bottle of hCG drops? There are basically three types of “hCG” out there now.

1. Prescription hCG – the real hormone
2. Homeopathic hCG – if it’s true homeopathic hCG it will contain something like “hCG – 10x, 30x, 60x, etc type numbers)
3. hCG Activator products – these do not contain any hCG at all, but contain amino acids. It’s claimed these these amino acids cause your body to make hCG. I do not know if I believe this at this point you guys. I like to keep an open mind.

When it comes down to it, my personal choice is that I really only feel comfortable using prescription hCG, the real hormone. One example given to me was the question, “would you feel comfortable taking homeopathic birth control?” Hmmm. Hormones are powerful! I do not think the hCG hormone is a placebo so, so the muscle sparing effects that hCG seems to create in the presence of such a low calorie diet is very important to me. However, I have to admit that I have seen some great results with homeopathic hCG as well, so I can’t knock it completely, and some choose to go this route and feel completely comfortable with it. I have not seen enough feedback from these hCG activator products (that don’t contain hCG) to feel comfortable recommending them at this time. The truth is, anyone will lose weight on a 500 calorie, regardless of taking any supplement or hormone.

The questions are:
1. how much of that weight loss is fat vs. muscle,
2. how is your hunger while ON the diet itself, and
3. how will the diet effect your metabolism during and after the diet (and thus ability to maintain)?

To me the hCG hormone is what kind of guarantees a positive answer to these questions, whereas I do not have proof of such with the other hCG type products at this time. The others MAY work, I just can’t be sure, and I feel best sticking with what I know can be relied on since I only have one body and no time for do-overs.

The current sources for real prescription hCG that I feel comfortable recommending, if you end up choosing to go that route, can be found here: http://hcgchica.com/buy-hcg-injections-worldwide/
And all my tutorials for injections are here to help you with mixing and injecting!: http://hcgchica.com/hcg-injections-tutorials/

Since I’m not a doctor, I can’t really give advice on what types of medications to continue or stop. If someone is on a prescription medication for something, most continue to take whatever it is without issue. Things like thyroid meds, etc, I myself continued while on the diet, as do others. Also, it’s not safe to stop most medications suddenly without weaning off anyway.

High dose steroids I see as being a definite problem as far interference with weight loss, so it would be best to wait till something like that was over and done with before embarking on hCG.

That said, when it comes to certain things like hormone replacement therapy or taking any type of cream that is in oil base (although mineral oil is ok, just not other oils), this can interfere with weight loss on hCG- just something to be aware of or to speak with your doc about.

The other thing I should mention is that when a person who is on insulin or diabetes meds for diabetes does this diet, they often find their medication levels need to be adjusted so if a person has Diabetes, this is one particular case where it’s really advised to do this protocol under the more direct care of your physician who can help monitor this and adjust accordingly to avoid problems with blood sugar and such.

As far as any other regularvitaminsand supplements go, the only ones you need to be sure to avoid are oil basedvitaminslikevitaminE caps or fish oil caps, omega 3 and 6, orvitaminD. Most others, like bvitamins, or general health supplements are going to be fine- sometimes the ingredient label may say it contains starch and some feel this is a problem, but if the amount is very minute, I don’t see it as being an issue because the diet itself DOES contain a small amount of carbs in the melba/fruit and veggies, so it seems like it should be fine.

Actually, hCG really only works in conjunction with the very low calorie diet and no fats or oils in your diet.

The hormone makes you body very sensitive to fats, carbs, and a regular calorie intake- meaning any of these things can cause abnormal weight gain that wouldn’t occur if you were not taking the hCG hormone.

So all that is to say that it’s very important to only take hCG when you are actually on Phase 2. To take it at other times would actually not only not help with weight loss, it would likely cause abnormal weight gain.

Testing your hCG to make sure it's real (6)

Good question. No, this will not work. Ovulation tests are used to test for a completely different hormone from hCG called Luteinzing hormone. So ovulation tests do not test for the presence of the hCG hormone at all. So make sure you get a pregnancy test if you want to test the potency of your hCG!

The hCG hormone that you’re using for either rx hCG Injections or rx hCG Drops can be tested using a pregnancy test. Pregnancy tests are designed to test specifically for the presence of the hCG hormone, and getting a positive register on the test for hCG indicates that the hCG is there and active. Check out this interesting article on how pregnancy tests work.

How to Test Your hCG:

Directions below, but see a demonstration of testing hCG with instructions in my video here as well.

– It’s best to buy a pregnancy test that has a small window where you can drop just a small amount of hCG into it.

– The kind of regular pregnancy test that has a long stick that you pee on is not ideal because you would have to use up a lot your precious hCG mixture in order to do the test. If you have to use the pee-on kind of pregnancy test, cut off the majority of the “stick” part with some scissors, then put some hCG on what’s left of the stick- this will at least minimize how much hCG you have to waste. I often find the type of pregnancy test that has the little window at the dollar store- they are very small in size.

– Use one of your syringes that came with your hCG kit to drop a small amount of hCG into the test window- you want to use at little as possible, but at the same time, you need to use enough so the liquid gravitates fully across the testing area. I have found this to be somewhere around a 200iu dose (20 units or .2cc/ml on the syringe) if you mixed your hCG in a 1:1 ratio originally (5mls bac water + 5oooiu hCG or 2ml’s bac water + 2000iu hCG).

– After a minute or so, you should see your results in the window. Do not read the results too many minutes later as the double line will fade very quickly and make it seem negative when it really was positive to start with.

– Check the package directions so you know what you’re looking for when looking or a positive result. Usually it’s either a double line, or a plus sign, or something like that.

– If the double line is there but very faint, that’s okay, it’s still positive. Remember you are using a very tiny amount of hCG on the test.

So what to when you’ve tested your hCG only to find the results came up negative? Time to panic!! Just kidding. Let’s talk about the logical way to approach this.

What To Do If you Got a Negative hCG Pregnancy Test Result, Step by Step:

1. You didn’t pee on the test did you? When you test hCG you test the actual mixture, not your pee. Don’t worry- if you did this, you are not the first to get confused about this.

2. Test it again, with another brand of test. Just double check. I have done 5 rounds of the hCG Diet now with prescription hCG Injections – using a total of 6 different brands of hCG as well, often testing my hCG more than once during a round, and I have never gotten a negative pregnancy test result. This is not to say it doesn’t happen with RX hCG, but it’s uncommon. That’s why I think it’s best to test the hCG again with another test to make sure it’s not a fluke like an old test or something- most of the time, you will get a positive test result for your RX hcg if you just mixed it.

3. Make Sure you Used a Pregnancy test not an Ovulation test. Ovulation tests will not work for testing hCG as they test for an entirely different hormone.

4. A FAINT line, A FAINT Positive result IS still Positive. Don’t panic if it’s faint and think it’s negative. Your hCG is good if this is what you are seeing.

5. Mix a new/fresh batch of hCG. If you truly do have a negative hCG test result it’s best not to use it any longer. You don’t want to risk losing the wrong kind of weight and feeling crappy on the diet. hCG is not a placebo, and as such you will NOT get the same results on the hCG diet without having the active hCG hormone in your body. If you just mixed your hCG and didn’t do something to cause the negative result (like forget to put it back in the fridge for a day), contact the company you bought the hCG from- they should be willing to replace it for you- there is always the chance of a bad batch of hCG getting processed.

Here are a few reasons why you might get a negative result on a pregnancy test when you test your RX hCG:

2. The line was very faint but still there, but it was so faint you thought it was negative (it’s positive if this is the case folks- continue using the hCG, your safe).

3. You used an old test- double check the result by testing it again, with a different brand of pregnancy test if possible.

4. You accidentally forgot to put your hCG back in the fridge and it’s been sitting out all day.

5. You didn’t keep the vial covered with foil or something similar to keep out the light.

6. It’s been a month on the protocol using the same hCG- the potency DOES gradually dwindle and eventually will not be potent enough to use anymore- when this happens you will most likely notice things like feeling hungrier, foggy head, grumpier, not losing weight all of a sudden, etc. Time to mix a new batch of hCG.

7. Perhaps you got a bad batch of hCG to start with from the company- contact them and they should replace your hCG for you.

If your hCG truly did test negative for any of reasons 4-7:

Please do not continue using that hCG- mix a new batch of hCG instead. If you don’t have any more hCG handy, you can either purchase more through ushcginjections and they can ship it to you pretty quickly if you live in the states, or if you simply can’t get any more right away, it would be best to go straight into p3 (the no starch no sugars phase of the diet) until you can get new hCG. If you’re pretty sure you’ve been taking hCG that was not potent already for a few days because of how you were feeling on it, there is no need to do the 72 hours without hCG on 500 calories- the hCG is already not in your system at this point, so just start p3 right away. If you feel like the hCG was potent until just a day or so ago, you can do the 72 hours of 500 calorie eating without taking any hCG, but gradually increase your calories of p2 foods as necessary during that 72 hours so you don’t feel excessively hungry as the hCG leaves your system. Basically, listen to your body- if you’re ravenous, eat more p2 foods. Ravenous, low blood sugar or other symptoms like this are indications that you need to eat more as the hCG is fading from your system or already has.

Why You Should Not Use hCG That Is Not Potent:

If you are doing the hCG Diet, hopefully then you’ve researched it and you believe that hCG is not a placebo. The hCG hormone in the right dose, really does cause your body to use your fat for fuel and spares lean muscle mass. As such, if you were to use hCG that was no longer viable aka “bad hCG”, you will be taking great chances with losing a lot more lean muscle mass, causing your body to feel like it’s starving, stalled weightloss, etc. It’s simply not worth it- you only have one body- treat it right.

It’s important when you are on the hCG Diet to be using hCG that is active. After all, the hCG hormone and how it works in sync with the diet is not a placebo right? If you are not sure you believe this, research the diet and people’s hCG results a little more so that you will take this part seriously. Check out my youtube playlist of before and after hCG Diet results here.

When Should You Test Your hCG?

Most of the time you will only need to test your hCG once, when you first mix it, and sometimes twice, if you are planning on using the same hCG mixture for more than 3 weeks, you will probably want to test it again as you near a month using it. Here’s a breakdown of when are the best times to test your hCG:

1. At the start of each round- right after you mix your hCG, test it with a pregnancy test. Instructions here.

2. If you plan on using 1 batch of hCG for more than 3 weeks- for instance, the ushcg injection kits are designed to be used for close to a full month with the same batch. Test it as you approach that 30 day mark to make sure it’s still working for you. I did this myself when I used their hCG for round 5 and the hCG was still testing positive on day 30 of it’s use. Good stuff!

3. If you ever accidentally leave out your hCG for several hours unrefrigerated or forget to cover your vial with foil to keep the light out- test it to make sure it’s still potent after being left out.

4. If you are feeling abnormally hungry and weak after already trying to adjust your dose, etc. and it’s been awhile since you’ve tested it.

First of all, hCG CAN and does test positive on pregnancy tests. So what I am about to say below applies ONLY to the current recommended sources for real prescription hCG on my blog. If you are having trouble getting hCG to test positive on a pregnancy test from any other source, I cannot vouch for those companies because I have not investigated them. One thing you should know however is that you cannot buy real hCG – the actual hormone – over the counter- so if you purchase something at GNA or Walmart, etc., you are not purchasing the real hormone. If that is what you intended, great. But I just wanted to clarify that for anyone who wasn’t sure.

This is significant because there are plenty of bottles of hCG out there that aren’t the real hormone, and if the real hormone is what you desired, well then it’s nice to have a way to prove this. So again, the following I’m about to discuss only applies to the 4 companies currently on my blog that I’ve personally interacted with and know to be true hCG.

To give you another quick example of how hCG is quite frequently improperly tested, check out this facebook comment:

“I found a pregnancy test and decided to test mine. It was the pee on kind. Knowing a days worth of injection wouldn’t be enough I broke it open. I put the injection on the tablet and put it back together. Nothing changed. So I put the end under the faucet and put water on it to move everything forward and the lines lit up. So mine is positive.”

If she had stopped at her first efforts, she would have thought her hCG was negative. This happens all the time you guys. It’s easier these days to just make sure to purchase hCG from a qualified source since the pregnancy testing is really just proving to be unreliable.

The sources that are on my blog are real prescription hCG, I have made sure of this- I do not recommend any company on my buy hCG page without fully communicating with them first. This is extremely important to me because I do not believe hCG is a placebo, and I would only use the real thing on myself, so I have made sure these sources are real. The sources in the U.S. – Nu Image, US hCG, and Advance hCG, all use the same compounding pharmacies that any weight loss clinic uses to make and dispense the prescription hCG.

To feel completely secure, 2 of the sources on my site I have actually met with in person and visited some of the pharmacies they use where the actual hCG is produced now (because I really do care about you guys and that you see the proof too!) You can see highlights of on of my trips below. The pharmacies I visited in person were for Nu Image and US hCG Shots.

Hunger on the hCG Diet (3)

What can be done if you are hungry on the hCG Diet? The most important thing NOT to do is to do nothing. DO NOT LET YOURSELF BY HUNGRY. If you are hungry on hCG, you need to take action to figure out the reason and fix it. Before we get into this however, please do keep in mind that you will experience mild hunger

When Hunger is Okay and Normal on the hCG Diet

– The first 2-3 days on the VLCD portion of the diet. Your body will be adjusting and you just may feel pretty hungry at a few points throughout the day. This will pass.

– At mealtimes. On the diet, it is necessary to take in the small amount of calories up to 500 and so you will find that around mealtimes- says noon and 5 or 6pm that you are getting hungry and need to eat your hCG meal. But once you’ve eaten your small meal of 200-250 calories or so, you should feel satisfied for several hours after that.

When Hunger is NOT okay and NOT normal on the hCG Diet

– It’s beyond day 2 or 3 of the VLCD and you are starving much of the day.

– You eat your hCG meal but are hungry again soon after.

– You can’t go to sleep at night because you feel hungry.

– If you eat to hunger, you find yourself eating more like 1000 calories in order to feel satisfied and normal.

Possible Causes of Excessive Hunger on the hCG Diet

– You’ve been using the same mixture of hCG for awhile now (ie. 3-4 weeks) and the potency is starting to go bad.

– The dose of hCG you are taking isn’t right for your body. Even if one dose felt good for awhile, as you lose weight, the dose you need may change.

– You accidentally left your hCG out of the fridge one day and kept using it after this without re-testing it to make sure that it was still potent after leaving it out unrefrigerated.

This is the easiest and first thing you should do to make sure your hCG is potent. Please see the category on testing hCG here. If it’s positive, go to step 2.

2. Adjust your Dose. Being on the wrong dose of hCG is by far the most common reason for excessive hunger on the hCG protocol.
– BOTH a dose that is too high or too low will cause you excessive hunger.
– The proper dose for you that will cause you to feel no hunger eating only 500 calories a day is very individual.

How to Adjust Your Dose and Find the Best Dose of hCG For You

Let me give you the main spread first- In my observation, the large majority who do the hCG Diet will find that a dose somewhere between 125iu-200iu will be the right dose for them. Additionally, once you find your “sweet spot” of a dose, you may still likely have to change your dose as time goes on and you lose more weight- it’s been the observation of many that as people shrink they need smaller doses of hCG than they needed initially.

Many find that a dose of either 125iu or 150iu works best for them. A smaller number I’d say feel good on 175iu, and a minority feel best on 200iu. I would say in general a starting dose of 125-150iu would give you the most likely chance of being on a good dose right away, since those are the most common doses to feel not hungry on. If you still feel very hungry after a few days on the diet at one of these doses, try increasing your dose gradually (ie. try 175iu for a couple days- if the hunger is a little better but still not gone, continue to 200iu for a couple days and monitor your hunger). If you decide to make your starting dose at 125iu and you find that you are pretty hungry still after a few days, since this is usually the minimum dose of hCG a person would take, the decision is easy- you need to increase your dose. If you start your dose at 150iu and find yourself very hungry still after a few days, you have to decide whether or not to reduce or increase your dose as you either need to drop to 125iu or try increasing to 175iu- so in this case it might be a little harder to know which way to go.

Lastly, if you’ve been on the protocol for a couple weeks already and feeling good on a certain dose but suddenly find yourself getting hungry, and you’re already positive that your hCG is still good, one way in which to find out if your dose needs to go up or down is to skip a day of hCG entirely- if you feel more hungry on the day you skip, this would indicate that you need more hCG in your system meaning to increase your dose, and if you find yourself less hungry on the day of no hCG, this would indicate that you need a lower dose of hCG.

See how to find your dose on the syringe for an explanation of finding these different doses of 125iu, 150iu, 175iu, and 200iu.

I will quote what Dr. Simeons said in his book pounds and inches here: “Those not uncommon patients who feel that even so little food is too much for them, can omit anything they wish.”
So in short, no.

However- do keep in mind, do not get carried away with this- you should eat to hunger which means if you are truly not hungry for 500 calories in a day while on hCG, and you end up eating say 300-400 calories instead some days, so be it. However, if you are technically hungry but purposefully trying to eat less than the 500 calories in an effort to lose more weight, this is not a proper way to view things (as I’m sure you’ll agree). Sometimes we can find excuses for ourselves to try to get quicker results in the short-term but we need to remember that it’s long term health that we should be concerned with.

Myself? The amount of calories I eat varies. I don’t actually weigh/count anything but the protein as Dr. Simeons instructed, however, just to get an idea, some days I’ll plug in basic amounts of what I ate into myfitnesspal just to check. What I find is that many days on the hCG protocol I’m so not hungry, especially at the beginning, that I only find myself eating 300-400 calories in a day. Other days I find myself needing not only the full 500 but sometimes even close to 600 calories, so that’s what I eat.

My hydrostatic body fat testing has shown that eating under the 500 calories when my hunger dictates has not been a problem for me- meaning I did not lose excessive amounts of muscle doing this, and I’ve kept off my fat loss from hCG very comfortably since then as well.

So if you let hunger be your guide, as Robin Woodall so wonderfully explained in her book Weightloss Apocalypse, you will get the best weight loss in the healthiest way out of the hCG Diet protocol.

Can you take a look at the ingredients on your bottle of hCG drops? There are basically three types of “hCG” out there now.

1. Prescription hCG – the real hormone
2. Homeopathic hCG – if it’s true homeopathic hCG it will contain something like “hCG – 10x, 30x, 60x, etc type numbers)
3. hCG Activator products – these do not contain any hCG at all, but contain amino acids. It’s claimed these these amino acids cause your body to make hCG. I do not know if I believe this at this point you guys. I like to keep an open mind.

When it comes down to it, my personal choice is that I really only feel comfortable using prescription hCG, the real hormone. One example given to me was the question, “would you feel comfortable taking homeopathic birth control?” Hmmm. Hormones are powerful! I do not think the hCG hormone is a placebo so, so the muscle sparing effects that hCG seems to create in the presence of such a low calorie diet is very important to me. However, I have to admit that I have seen some great results with homeopathic hCG as well, so I can’t knock it completely, and some choose to go this route and feel completely comfortable with it. I have not seen enough feedback from these hCG activator products (that don’t contain hCG) to feel comfortable recommending them at this time. The truth is, anyone will lose weight on a 500 calorie, regardless of taking any supplement or hormone.

The questions are:
1. how much of that weight loss is fat vs. muscle,
2. how is your hunger while ON the diet itself, and
3. how will the diet effect your metabolism during and after the diet (and thus ability to maintain)?

To me the hCG hormone is what kind of guarantees a positive answer to these questions, whereas I do not have proof of such with the other hCG type products at this time. The others MAY work, I just can’t be sure, and I feel best sticking with what I know can be relied on since I only have one body and no time for do-overs.

The current sources for real prescription hCG that I feel comfortable recommending, if you end up choosing to go that route, can be found here: http://hcgchica.com/buy-hcg-injections-worldwide/
And all my tutorials for injections are here to help you with mixing and injecting!: http://hcgchica.com/hcg-injections-tutorials/

hCG Drops (1)

Can you take a look at the ingredients on your bottle of hCG drops? There are basically three types of “hCG” out there now.

1. Prescription hCG – the real hormone
2. Homeopathic hCG – if it’s true homeopathic hCG it will contain something like “hCG – 10x, 30x, 60x, etc type numbers)
3. hCG Activator products – these do not contain any hCG at all, but contain amino acids. It’s claimed these these amino acids cause your body to make hCG. I do not know if I believe this at this point you guys. I like to keep an open mind.

When it comes down to it, my personal choice is that I really only feel comfortable using prescription hCG, the real hormone. One example given to me was the question, “would you feel comfortable taking homeopathic birth control?” Hmmm. Hormones are powerful! I do not think the hCG hormone is a placebo so, so the muscle sparing effects that hCG seems to create in the presence of such a low calorie diet is very important to me. However, I have to admit that I have seen some great results with homeopathic hCG as well, so I can’t knock it completely, and some choose to go this route and feel completely comfortable with it. I have not seen enough feedback from these hCG activator products (that don’t contain hCG) to feel comfortable recommending them at this time. The truth is, anyone will lose weight on a 500 calorie, regardless of taking any supplement or hormone.

The questions are:
1. how much of that weight loss is fat vs. muscle,
2. how is your hunger while ON the diet itself, and
3. how will the diet effect your metabolism during and after the diet (and thus ability to maintain)?

To me the hCG hormone is what kind of guarantees a positive answer to these questions, whereas I do not have proof of such with the other hCG type products at this time. The others MAY work, I just can’t be sure, and I feel best sticking with what I know can be relied on since I only have one body and no time for do-overs.

The current sources for real prescription hCG that I feel comfortable recommending, if you end up choosing to go that route, can be found here: http://hcgchica.com/buy-hcg-injections-worldwide/
And all my tutorials for injections are here to help you with mixing and injecting!: http://hcgchica.com/hcg-injections-tutorials/

Escrow Refills hCG Questions (3)

1. Enter the CID code (272860) into the “invitation code” field, like so:

2. Click “Shop for the hCG diet” on the Left Hand column, towards the bottom.

3. Choose a brand of hCG, in the 500iu vial size. You will need approximately 1 vial of 5000iu hCG for each 3 weeks you plan to be on the hCG Diet.

4. Choose a mixing/dosing kit to go with the hCG. The kits come both for Injections and Sublingual (aka drops). Choose a kit based on what type of hCG you are doing (injections or sublingual) and how long you plan to be on the diet (23 or 43 day kit choices). Select the kit that’s for 5000iu vial sizes since that is what you are purchasing. Steps 2-4 shown here:

This occasionally happens where you find the code to stop working- usually all you need to do is close out the original browser that you were trying to use the code in, open a fresh internet browser, and try again- this always the cause and it should work for you again after opening a new internet window.

If you’re still having trouble after trying that, email me for help at [email protected]

Lipo Shot and B12 Shot Questions (1)

A couple main questions I get about lipo shots is what are they, and will they help me lose MORE weight than if I did the hCG protocol without them.

First of all, I don’t actually know all that much about this okay? I’ll just share what I’ve gathered so far about the Lipo to help you make your decision. In the end, the way I see the Lipo shots at this time is they are a nice addition IF you have the funds to try them out, but they are not by any means a requirement for success for most of us. I did my entire hCG journey without them. I’d never even heard of Lipo shots until I was done losing weight lol! However, if I had known, I probably would have tried them at least once for comparison.

Essentially Lipo shots contain ingredients that help your body to metabolize fat more efficiently; more healthfully you could say. Choline, Inositol, and Methionine are the 3 main ingredients in Lipo shots.

What I gather so far from my research is not that the Lipo will help you lose MORE weight per se, but that it will allow your fat loss and hCG journey to possibly unfold in a healthier manner for your body.

You will be losing a lot more fat in a short period of time on this particular diet – this is a LOT of work for your body and especially your liver where that fat has to be broken down

This article mentions that, “A lipotropic nutrient is one that helps fat flow out of your liver. Such nutrients are involved in fat metabolism in one way or another, and often support natural liver detoxification processes as well……While you need to engage and sustain the process of weight loss to solve fatty liver problems over time, various nutrients can play a supportive role either by helping the fat flow or by protecting your liver.”

It also mentions, “The amino acid methionine can be converted to choline as well as being vital to your liver’s clearance of toxins.” I think this is pretty significant actually because where do our bodies store all the toxins that we are exposed to throughout our life? Our fat. It’s the safest place. So when all of a sudden we’re losing fat that we’ve gained over a period of half our lifetime, what happens to all the toxins that are stored there? Yes that’s right, they are now being freed, into our blood stream. This is also one reason why you may feel pretty crummy on hCG at various points on your journey. So taking something (doesn’t have to be Lipo shots, but this appears to be one method) to help your body get those toxins out could potentially be very helpful.

So just to be clear, I would not purchase Lipo shots expecting to have a higher amount of weight loss with hCG. I would purchase it if you HAVE the extra funds, and you like the idea of supporting your body and especially your liver during this very demanding time for your body.

Cheating on the hCG Diet (4)

Okay so sometimes a cheat is absolutely unavoidable, like the following case:

A woman emailed asking how she could minimize the damage from the required wedding cake tasting she had to go for her wedding. Her plan was to “look like a weirdo” as she put it (love that! Yes be weird and be proud!) and “take one small tiny bite of each of the 6 samples.”

Three things:

1. Skip your hCG shot that day.

Even though hCG actually stays in your system for 72 hours, the amount does gradually reduce as the hours wear on, so it makes sense that having a little less hCG in your system on the day of the “cheat” may aid in having less negative effects.

2. Eat only your 2 proteins and the phase 2 veggies that day (outside of the small cheat items).

By removing the Phase 2 fruit and melba servings, this is where the main source of sugar and carbs is on the VLCD, so this will possibly help “balance” out whatever sugar/carb content you’ll be taking in with the cheat items.

I think this has to do with where in the timeline of your round you’ve cheated, as well as how frequently it’s happened. For instance how close to the end of your round was the cheat? If you are early or mid round, I think you can recover and get your body back into a groove more easily. If you are very close to P3, it might present a little more of a challenge. If you have cheated frequently throughout the whole round, I could see this presenting a big problem.

I agree that cheating is not a good thing on hCG. And I do think that you will gain fat from a cheat much more quickly than if you were to eat those same foods off of hCG. Ie. chocolate cake off hCG might give you a .2 gain, but chocolate cake ON hCG might give you a 1 lb gain. It’s crazy stuff. That said, I don’t believe in scaring people into thinking that cheating will ruin their entire course on the diet or maintenance after. I just don’t think it’s that drastic. I have had at least one cheat I think on most of my rounds, and I managed to stabilize and maintain my weight loss. I did indeed gain from the actual cheat, and it took some days to start losing again, which was totally not worth the cheat true, but once the cheat was behind me, I do not feel it hampered my long term results, if that makes sense – and this is coming from someone who maintained her weight loss between rounds, and now almost 3 years after my last round. So don’t beat yourself up over those mistakes and fear super long term consequences. I think our bodies are quite resilient and if you do the logical things to get back on track, your body will get back on track too.

Disclaimer- PLEASE READ! I am NOT a medical professional in any way, shape or form. I'm simply a mom sharing what has worked for myself and others. Any content on hcgchica.com should not be misconstrued as medical advice. It is your responsibility to speak with your physician about anything medical related.

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Note: This will add you to my newsletter which shares hcg diet help & sales with you from my 3 hCG sites: hcgchica.com, hcgchicarecipes.com, & P3tolife.com. Emails are generally 1-2x a week. Unsubscribe at any time!

Stay Connected.

Let's Get This Diet Thing DONE,

And move on to what you really want to do with your life.

I'd like to receive the free email course.

Note: This will add you to my newsletter which shares hcg diet help & sales with you from my 3 hCG sites: hcgchica.com, hcgchicarecipes.com, & P3tolife.com. Emails are generally 1-2x a week. Unsubscribe at any time!